Real-time calculus for scheduling hard real-time systems

This paper establishes a link between three areas, namely Max-Plus Linear System Theory as used for dealing with certain classes of discrete event systems, Network Calculus for establishing time bounds in communication networks, and real-time scheduling. In particular, it is shown that important results from scheduling theory can be easily derived and unified using Max-Plus Algebra. Based on the proposed network theory for real-time systems, the first polynomial algorithm for the feasibility analysis and optimal priority assignment for a general task model is derived.