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Testing the Schedulability of Synchronous Traffic for the Timed Token Medium Access Control Protocol

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Abstract

One of the key issues related to guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines in a timed token network (such as fiber distributed data interface) where the timed token medium access control protocol is used is the schedulability test of synchronous traffic (i.e., testing whether or not all synchronous messages can be transmitted before their deadlines, under a given setting of network parameters). Much work has been done on how to assign network parameters appropriately in order to guarantee timely transmission of synchronous traffic. As a result quite a few synchronous bandwidth allocation schemes and some good guidelines on selection of the target token rotation time have been proposed. In contrast, limited research has been conducted on how to effectively test whether or not given network parameters can guarantee timely transmission of all synchronous messages (of a considered synchronous message set) before their deadlines. The previous testing methods for synchronous message schedulability only provide a sufficient (but not necessary) test and therefore fail to always keep effective for any synchronous message set considered. In this paper, we propose two testing methods for determining the schedulability of a synchronous message set with message deadlines no longer than periods. The proposed tests perform better than any previous test in the sense that they are both sufficient and necessary. Some numerical examples are given to compare different testing methods, all of which have demonstrated the superiority of the proposed tests to other existing testing methods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing & Technology, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby, DE22 1GB, UK

    Sijing Zhang

  2. Department of Computer Science, Real-Time Systems Group, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK

    Alan Burns

  3. CNRS-PRiSM Laboratory, University of Versailles, 45 avenue des etats-unis, 78035, Versailles, France

    Ahmed Mehaoua

  4. Centre for Communications Systems Research, University of Cambridge, William Gates Building, JJ Thomas Avenue, Cambridge, 3B3 0FD, UK

    E. Stewart Lee

  5. Department of Computer Science, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK

    Hongji Yang

Authors
  1. Sijing Zhang
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  2. Alan Burns
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  3. Ahmed Mehaoua
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  4. E. Stewart Lee
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  5. Hongji Yang
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Zhang, S., Burns, A., Mehaoua, A. et al. Testing the Schedulability of Synchronous Traffic for the Timed Token Medium Access Control Protocol. Real-Time Systems 22, 251–280 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014558418873

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