Abstract:
The DEAR-COTS (Distributed Embedded ARchitecture using Commercial Off-The-Shelf components) architecture provides a generic COTS-based framework to execute computer control applications, allowing the integration of applications with different timing and criticality requirements, whilst guaranteeing the requirements of fault-tolerant real-time applications. This paper presents the framework provided by DEAR-COTS for the development of fault-tolerant real-time applications. These applications are supported by a repository of task interaction objects, and by a reliable real-time communication infrastructure. The object repository allows programmers to abstract from the low-level implementation details of distribution and replication issues, thus focusing in the requirements of the supported applications. The communication infrastructure provides a set of atomic multicast and consolidation protocols, upon which the required reliable real-time communication is guaranteed.

Authors:
Luis Miguel Pinho, Francisco Vasques