Optimal Priority-Free Conditionally-Preemptive Real-Time Scheduling of Periodic Tasks Based on DES Supervisory Control

This paper presents a general discrete-event system (DES)-based hard periodic real-time task model. Based on supervisory control theory (SCT), an optimal priority-free real-time scheduling technique is proposed to process all the tasks running in uniprocessor or multiprocessor real-time systems (RTS). The preemption relation in this paper generalizes priority-based preemption. First, regular languages are utilized to describe the processor behavior related to each task’s execution. Thereafter, the languages are represented by DES generators. Finally, the global processor behavior is generated as the synchronous product of these DES generators. By discarding the priorities, a novel preemption policy, namely conditional-preemption, is developed. Two sets of conditional-preemption specifications are developed, on the processor level and task level, respectively. Moreover, in order to control the system to be nonblocking and also limit the worst-case response time of the tasks, two corresponding sets of specifications are presented. After generating the global specification as the synchronous product, by implementing SCT the calculated supervisor can provide all the safe real-time execution sequences. The supervisor calculation can be sped up by a three-step algorithm. Finally, the real-time scheduling is implemented for real-world examples.