The TMO structuring approach and its potential for telecommunication applications

The TMO (Time-triggered, Message-triggered Object) structuring scheme has the goal of improving productivity in the design of complex real-time computer systems (RTCSs). The TMO scheme facilitates a new paradigm in designing RTCSs called the GG (General-form, timeliness-Guaranteed) design paradigm. Its essence is to realize real-time computing with a common and general design style, not alienating the mainstream computing industry and yet allowing system engineers to confidently produce certifiable RTCSs for safety-critical applications. The TMO structuring scheme is a syntactically simple but semantically major extension of the conventional object structuring approaches, and its support tools can be based on various well-established object-oriented programming languages and on ubiquitous commercial real-time operating system kernels. The scheme enables a reduction of the designer's efforts in guaranteeing timely service capabilities of information systems. We discuss the major features of the TMO structuring approach for real-time computer systems and its potential for use in the telecommunication application domain. Some of the major computing requirements that are imposed by a large class of telecommunication applications are identified and then we discuss on how well the TMO approach can satisfy these requirements. As an illustration, we also present the top-down design of a simple, yet concrete multi-party video conferencing application using the TMO structuring scheme. Finally, the major benefits of the TMO structuring scheme in the design of complex RTCSs are discussed.