FCS/nORB: A feedback control real-time scheduling service for embedded ORB middleware

Object Request Broker (ORB) middleware has shown promise in meeting the functional and real-time performance requirements of distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. However, existing real-time ORB middleware standards such as RT-CORBA do not adequately address the challenges of (1) managing unpredictable workload, and (2) providing robust performance guarantees portably across different platforms. To overcome this limitation, we have developed software called FCS/nORB that integrates a Feedback Control real-time Scheduling (FCS) service with the nORB small-footprint real-time ORB designed for networked embedded systems. FCS/nORB features feedback control loops that provide real-time performance guarantees by automatically adjusting the rate of remote method invocations transparently to an application. FCS/nORB thus enables real-time applications to be truly portable in terms of real-time performance as well as functionality, without the need for hand tuning. This paper presents the design, implementation, and empirical evaluation of FCS/nORB. Our extensive experiments on a Linux testbed demonstrate that FCS/nORB can provide deadline miss ratio and utilization guarantees in the face of changes in platform and task execution times, while introducing only a small amount of overhead.