ABSTRACT
Real-time programming has always been one of the most challenging programming disciplines. Realtime programming requires comprehensive command of sequential programming, concurrency, and, of course, time. Real-time programming has many application domains. In this chapter, however, we structure our discussion around digital control systems for the following two reasons. First, digital control systems represent a large portion of real-time software in a diverse set of industries. Examples include automotive power train control systems, aircraft flight control systems, electrical drive systems in paper mills, or process control systems in power plants and refineries. Many of these systems distribute their components over networks with significant communication delays. Therefore, we also discuss networked real-time programming (Section 11.7). The second reason is pedagogical. Digital control is defined by a set of abstractions that are real-time programmable and mathematically tractable in the context of the dynamics of physiochemical processes. The abstractions clearly define what application engineers (control engineers) expect of real-time programming. These abstractions therefore constitute a precise definition of the real-time programming problem (Section 11.2).
