Real-Time Computation and Communication Group

Real-Time Computing is a generic enabling technology for many important applications, including multimedia, financial trading systems, air-traffic control systems, robotics, and process control, just to name a few. The environments in which such computing systems are embedded pose relatively rigid requirements on their performance. These requirements are usually stated as constraints on response time and/or on the temporal validity of sensory data. It is this time-cognizant aspect of real-time systems that distinguishes them from traditional computing systems by making the performance metrics significantly different, and often incompatible. For example, in a traditional computing system, scheduling and resource management algorithms aim at maximizing ``throughput'' and ``utilization''. In a real-time system, the use of such algorithms may be detrimental, making it necessary to craft new algorithms that aim at minimizing the ``percentage of missed deadlines'', for instance. 

The BU Real-Time Computation and Communication Research Group focuses its work on many areas, including: