The Temporal Specification of Interfaces in Distributed Real-Time Systems

The constructive design of dependable distributed real-time systems out of prevalidated components requires precise interface specifications of the components in the temporal domain and in the value domain. This paper focuses on the temporal specification of interfaces in composable distributed realtime systems. It establishes four principles of composability and gives examples of common composability violations in existing systems. It then classifies interfaces from the point of view of composability and presents, in the final section, as an example, the rational for the interface design in the time-triggered architecture. The time-triggered architecture is a distributed architecture for dependable embedded systems that supports the principles of composability.