On real-time physical systems

This paper introduces a class of real-time systems de- noted as Real-Time Physical Systems (RTPS), in which a physical quantity of interest is associated with a real-tim e resource. The physical quantity behavior is determined by scheduling events generated by a real-time scheduling algorithm. RTPS systems aim to generalize some exist- ing models used in real-time computing systems, namely power-aware and temperature-aware systems. Moreover, they have been conceived to put a bridge across real-time systems and the rapidly growing research field of Cyber- Physical Systems. In this paper we focus on a specific physical system where a state variable changes with an exponential de- cay behavior and the associated real-time resource must be scheduled in order to bound the value of the state vari- able within the desired working range. The aim is to de- termine the relationship between those physical and real- time parameters. For this purpose interesting properties are highlighted and relevant results are derived regarding the considered system model.