Preference-Oriented Scheduling Framework for Periodic Real-Time Tasks

We consider a set of real-time periodic tasks where some tasks are preferably executed as soon as possible (ASAP) and others as late as possible (ALAP) while still meeting their deadlines. After introducing the idea of preference-oriented (PO) execution, we formally define the concept of PO-optimality. For fully-loaded systems (with 100% utilization), we first propose a PO-optimal scheduler, namely ASAP-ensured earliest deadline (SEED), by focusing on ASAP tasks where the optimality of tasks’ ALAP preference is achieved implicitly due to the harmonicity of the PO-optimal schedules for such systems. Then, for underutilized systems (with less than 100% utilization), we show the discrepancies between different PO-optimal schedules. By extending SEED, we propose a generalized preference-oriented earliest deadline (POED) scheduler that can obtain a PO-optimal schedule for any schedulable task set. We further evaluate the proposed PO-optimal schedulers through extensive simulations. The results show that, comparing to that of the well-known EDF scheduler, the scheduling overheads of SEED and POED are higher (but still manageable) due to the additional consideration of tasks’ preferences. However, SEED and POED can achieve the preference-oriented execution objectives in a more successful way than EDF.