Distributed shared data space architecture for real-time systems

Designing distributed real time systems is an intricate and not very well structured task. Besides complex functional capabilities, these systems often require high standards on real time performance, reliability, and availability. Though architectures like CORBA hide the distributed infrastructure of the underlying platform from the application software, supporting real time performance and fault tolerant services remains a complex design problem. The paper presents an architecture for distributed real time systems in which fault tolerance is supported by transparent replication of mission critical components. The architecture is based on a shared data space through which components interact. The architecture is supported by middleware that provides a distributed implementation of the shared data space. The implementation is based on a light weight asynchronous communication protocol that is able to deliver real time performance.