• Main Real-time track

The objective of this track is to promote research on new and emerging topics of real-time systems research. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to the following: operating systems, networks, middleware, compilers, tools, scheduling, QoS support, resource management, testing and debugging, design and verification, modeling, WCET analysis, performance analysis, fault tolerance, security, power and thermal management, embedded platforms, and system experimentation and deployment experiences. Papers in all tracks of RTSS must address topics related to real-time systems.

• Cyber-Physical Systems track

As computation and communication elements become faster, cheaper, smaller and more pervasive, they are being increasingly embedded in physical world structures. Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are physical and engineered systems whose operations are controlled, coordinated and monitored by such computing and communication elements. The objective is to realize new systems with unprecedented capabilities. Applications of CPS can be found in diverse, yet critical, areas such as transportation (automobiles, avionics, space vehicles, railways, unmanned vehicles, etc.), critical infrastructures (power grids, smart buildings and cities, bridges, etc.), healthcare (medical devices, healthcare management networks, tele-medicine, remote surgery and even implantable and biomedical devices) and industrial control (manufacturing plants, power plants, etc.) to name but a few. Many applications in the CPS domain often possess real-time requirements. This track calls for papers that identify scientific foundations and technologies that advance the state-of-the-art for cyber-physical systems. Papers on all aspects of CPS are welcome. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to), new theories for CPS, design methods, simulation/emulation for CPS, tools chains, CPS architectures, security and privacy, hardware/software composition that include the physical components, analysis techniques and tools especially those with multiple temporal and spatial scales, performance analysis, robustness and safety among others. Papers that do not touch upon the real-time properties of CPS will not be considered. This track differs from the IoT track in that cyber-physical systems require the coupling of computation with physical systems that have been engineered for a single purpose and have some elements of control.

• HW-SW Integration and System Level Design Track

This track focuses on design methodologies and tools for hardware/software integration and co-design of modern embedded systems for real-time applications. Such systems are increasingly complex and heterogeneous, both in terms of architectures and applications they need to support, so new approaches aimed at their efficient design and optimization are in great demand. General topics relevant to this track include various architecture- and software-related issues of embedded systems design which include, but are not limited to, architecture description languages and tools, hardware architectures, design space exploration, synthesis and optimization. Of special interest are SoC design for real-time applications, special-purpose functional units, specialized memory structures, multi-core chips and communication aspects, FPGA simulation and prototyping, software simulation and compilation for novel architectures and applications, as well as power, timing and predictability analyses. Papers submitted to this track will not be considered if there is no discussion about properties related to real-time characteristics.

• Internet of Things (IoT) track

The proliferation of smart devices that unify sensing and communication with distributed computation and can be closely integrated into the surrounding environments has recently stimulated the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT), which has a wide range of applications including infrastructure monitoring (railways and bridges, electric grids, water management), smart city development (transportation and traffic control, emergency response and medical care) and industrial automation. To tackle the grant challenges due to the extremely constrained resources (energy supply, storage and computational power) in IoT devices, unprecedented scalability requirements as well as uncertain dynamics in their operating environments, this track will feature papers building on solid theoretical foundations, empirical development, and experimental evaluations for empowering IoT applications. Of special interest is research addressing aspects of real-time, scalability, interoperability, uncertainty, reliability, security, power management, energy scavenging, architectures, operating systems, middleware & programming abstractions, protocols, modeling, analysis and performance evaluation.The IoT track differs from the CPS track in that it focuses more on small sensing/communicating devices as well as a loose collection of large number of such devices. Papers submitted to this track will not be considered if there is no discussion about properties related to real-time characteristics.