Seamless Integration of Real-Time Communications Into CAN-CORBA Using Extended IDL and Fast-Track Messages

Abstract

Component-based middleware technologies have rapidly emerged as a viable solution to the notorious embedded software crisis. However, it is extremely challenging to actually utilize them in real-world applications since embedded systems are subject to a high degree of reliability and real-time requirements, under serious resource requirements. Recently, in (Kim et al., 20006), we have proposed CAN-CORBA for CAN-based distributed real-time control systems. It addresses major difficulties in designing embedded middleware, such as the narrow bandwidth of the communication medium and the limited size of the payload. In (Jeon et al., 2000), we have also presented a fault-tolerant extension to CAN-CORBA.

This paper presents our approach to integrating real-time communications into CAN-CORBA. It first explains how we extend the IDL of the standard CORBA to annotate timing constraints in a CORBA program. It then describes how we can use ``fast-track messages'' for time-critical real-time traffic.