Towards Middleware for Fault-Tolerance in Distributed Real-Time and Embedded Systems

Distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems often require support for multiple simultaneous quality of service (QoS) properties, such as real-timeliness and fault tolerance, that operate within resource constrained environments. These resource constraints motivate the need for a lightweight middleware infrastructure, while the need for simultaneous QoS properties require the middleware to provide fault tolerance capabilities that respect time-critical needs of DRE systems. Conventional middleware solutions, such as Fault-tolerant CORBA (FTCORBA) and Continuous Availability API for J2EE, have limited utility for DRE systems because they are heavyweight (e.g., the complexity of their feature-rich fault tolerance capabilities consumes excessive runtime resources), yet incomplete (e.g., they lack mechanisms that enable fault tolerance while maintaining real-time predictability). This paper provides three contributions to the development and standardization of lightweight real-time and...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: DAIS
• Authors: Jaiganesh Balasubramanian, Aniruddha S. Gokhale, Douglas C. Schmidt, Nanbor Wang
• Keywords: DAIS 2008, Distributed And Parallel Computing, DRE Systems, Fault Tolerance, Middleware