A unified process for the integration of large-scale, distributed, object-oriented, real-time systems in layered architectures

Over the past few decades, a great deal of research has been devoted to the development of real-time components and systems. Examples include real-time operating systems, real-time schedulers, real-time object models and real-time object brokers. Nevertheless, efforts to build such large-scale systems have lagged behind, due to interoperability problems, programming paradigms which are difficult to use, an absence of a standard QoS specification language, a general lack of maturity in the software engineering processes involved, and logistic difficulties of building large-scale distributed, real-time systems within a reasonable expenditure of resources. This paper focuses on the initial phases of the QUITE (QUorum Integration, Testbed and Exploitation) project, a recent effort to build a large-scale, QoS-aware, real-time system based on the integration of research technologies that have received funding from the Quorum program of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). It emphasizes the process aspects of the QUITE integration effort.