We consider the problem of resource provisioning for real-time cyber-physical applications in an open system environment where there does not exist a global resource scheduler that has complete knowledge of the real-time performance requirements of each individual application that shares the resources with the other applications. Regularity-based Resource Partition (RRP) model is an effective strategy to hierarchically partition and assign various resource slices among such applications. However, previous work on RRP model only discusses uniform resource environment, where resources are implicitly assumed to be synchronized and clocked at the same frequency. The challenge is that a task utilizing multiple resources may experience unexpected delays in non-uniform environments, where resources are clocked at different frequencies. This paper extends the RRP model to non-uniform multi-resource open system environments to tackle this problem. It first introduces a novel composite resource partition abstraction and then proposes algorithms to construct and reconfigure the composite resource partitions. Specifically, the Acyclic Regular Composite Resource Partition Scheduling (ARCRP-S) algorithm constructs regular composite resource partitions and the Acyclic Regular Composite Resource Partition Dynamic Reconfiguration (ARCRP-DR) algorithm reconfigures the composite resource partitions in the run time upon requests of partition configuration changes. Our experimental results show that compared with state-of-the-art methods, ARCRP-S can prevent unexpected resource supply shortfall and improve the schedulability up to 50%. On the other hand, ARCRP-DR can guarantee the resource supply during the reconfiguration with moderate computational overhead.

Applying high-speed real-time wireless technologies in industrial applications has the great potential to reduce the deployment and maintenance costs compared to their wired counterparts. Wireless technologies enhance the mobility and reduce the communication jitter and delay for mobile industrial equipment, such as mobile collaborative robots. Unfortunately, most existing wireless solutions employed in industrial fields either cannot support the desired high-speed communications or cannot guarantee deterministic, real-time performance. A more recent wireless technology, RT-WiFi, achieves a good balance between high-speed data rates and deterministic communication performance. It is however developed on commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, and takes considerable effort and hardware expertise to maintain and upgrade. To address these problems, this paper introduces the software-defined radio (SDR)-based RT-WiFi solution which we call SRT-WiFi. SRT-WiFi provides full-stack configurability for high-speed real-time wireless communications. We present the overall system architecture of SRT-WiFi and discuss its key functions which achieve better timing performance and solve the queue management and rate adaptation issues compared to COTS hardware-based RT-WiFi. To achieve effective network management with rate adaptation in multi-cluster SRT-WiFi, a novel scheduling problem is formulated and an effective algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. A multi-cluster SRT-WiFi testbed is developed to validate the design, and extensive experiments are performed to evaluate the performance at both device and system levels.

Smart factory automation has an ongoing trend to employ high-speed real-time wireless technologies to interconnect heterogeneous industrial assets to perform various sensing and control services, and support mobile equipment to conduct designated tasks in a collaborative fashion. Applications in automation industries usually have stringent requirements on both high data rates and deterministic real-time performance. Existing efforts, however, either cannot meet the performance requirements or are based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and cannot provide full-stack configurability [1].

Real-time end-to-end task scheduling in networked control systems (NCSs) requires the joint consideration of both network and computing resources to guarantee the desired quality of service (QoS). This paper introduces a new model for composite resource scheduling (CRS) in real-time networked control systems, which considers a strict execution order of sensing, computing, and actuating segments based on the control loop of the target NCS. We prove that the general CRS problem is NP-hard and study two special cases of the CRS problem. The first case restricts the computing and actuating segments to have unit-size execution time while the second case assumes that both sensing and actuating segments have unit-size execution time. We propose an optimal algorithm to solve the first case by checking the intervals with 100% network resource utilization and modify the deadlines of the tasks within those intervals to prune the search. For the second case, we propose another optimal algorithm based on a novel backtracking strategy to check the time intervals with the network resource utilization larger than 100% and modify the timing parameters of tasks based on these intervals. For the general case, we design a greedy strategy to modify the timing parameters of both network segments and computing segments within the time intervals that have network and computing resource utilization larger than 100%, respectively. The correctness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms are verified through extensive experiments.

We consider the problem of resource provisioning for real-time cyber-physical applications in an open system environment where there does not exist a global resource scheduler that has complete knowledge of the real-time performance requirements of each individual application that shares the resources with the other applications. Regularity-based Resource Partition (RRP) model is an effective strategy to hierarchically partition and assign various resource slices among the applications. However, RRP model does not consider changes in resource requests from the applications at run time. To allow for the run time adaptation to change resource requirements, we consider in this paper the issues in online resource partition reconfiguration, including semantics issues that arise in configuration transitions that may cause application failures. Based on the reconfiguration semantics, we study the online resource reconfigurability problem under the RRP model where the availability factors of resource partitions may be reconfigured during run time. We formalize the Dynamic Partition Reconfiguration (DPR) problem and provide a solution to this problem. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach in different scenarios. We also present a case study using the autonomous F1/10 model car; the controller of the F1/10 car requires resource adaptation to satisfy the computing needs of its PID controller and vision system under different operating conditions. Our implementation demonstrates the effectiveness and benefit of online resource partition reconfiguration using the DPR approach in a real system.

Maintaining the temporal validity of real-time data in cyber-physical systems is of critical importance to ensure the correct decision making and appropriate system operation. Most existing work on real-time data retrieval assume that the real-time data under study are always available for retrieval, and the developed scheduling algorithms mainly focus on making real-time decisions while meeting the temporal validity constraints. This assumption, however does not hold in many real-time applications with intermittent data availability. In this paper, we study the Availability-constrained Fresh Data Retrieval (AFDR) problem, which aims to retrieve all required real-time data for a given set of decision tasks on time while taking both the temporal validity and data availability constraints into consideration. We formulate the AFDR problem as an ILP problem and study its complexity under different settings. Given the general case of the AFDR problem is proved to be NP-hard, we focus on the cases that data items have unit-size retrieval time. For the single decision task scenario, we propose a polynomial-time optimal data retrieval algorithm, which consists of a task finish time selection phase and an optimal retrieval schedule construction phase, to solve the AFDR problem. For the multiple decision task scenario, we propose an efficient heuristic algorithm by transforming the temporal validity constraint of a real-time data item to the availability constraint. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms has been validated through extensive experiments. Our results show that the heuristic algorithm outputs around $1.5\times$1.5× feasible cases compared to that of the state-of-the-art scheme.

Real-time task scheduling for wireless networked control systems provides guarantees for the quality of service. This paper introduces a new model for joint network and computing resource scheduling (JNCRS) in real-time wireless networked control systems. This new end-to-end real-time task model considers a strict execution order of segments including the sensing, the computing and the actuating segment based on the control loop of WNCSs. The general JNCRS problem is proved to be a NP-hard problem. After dividing the JNCRS problem into four subproblems, we propose a polynomial-time optimal algorithm to solve the first subproblem where each segment has unit execution time, by checking the intervals with 100% network resource utilization and modify the deadlines of tasks. To solve the second subproblem where the computing segment is larger than one unit execution time, we define the new timing parameters of each network segment by taking into account the scheduling of the computing segments. We propose a polynomial-time optimal algorithm to check the intervals with the network resource utilization larger than or equal to 100% and modify the timing parameters of tasks based on these intervals.

Maintaining the temporal validity of real-time data in cyber-physical systems (CPSs) is of critical importance to ensure correct decision making and appropriate system operation. Most existing work on real-time data retrieval assumes that the real-time data under study are always available, and the developed scheduling algorithms mainly focus on making real-time decisions while meeting the temporal validity (freshness) constraints. This assumption, however does not hold in many real-life CPS applications with intermittent data availability, such as in energy harvesting-based sensing systems. In this paper, we study the multi-interval availability-constrained fresh data retrieval (MAFDR) problem, which aims to retrieve all required real-time data on time for a set of decision tasks while taking both the temporal validity and data availability constraints into consideration. We present the formulation of the MAFDR problem and study its complexity under different settings. For the scenario of single decision task with unit-size data retrieval time, we propose a polynomial-time optimal data retrieval algorithm, which comprises a task finish time selection phase and an optimal retrieval schedule construction phase. For the general scenario of multiple decision tasks with nonunit-size data retrieval time, we provide an integer linear programming formulation for the MAFDR problem and propose a fast heuristic algorithm based on max flow. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms has been validated through extensive experiments by comparing to the optimal solution and the state-of-the-art approach.