Real-Time Messaging for Embedded Systems and Mobile Devices

Mobile and embedded computer-based devices are becoming integral components of business and mission-critical systems. As a result, device-based software must increasingly communicate with software running on other devices as well as with backend enterprise applications. Application-to-application messaging is the enabling technology for this communication.

RTI's real-time messaging infrastructure was designed from the ground up to meet the unique challenges posed by embedded and mobile computing. These include:

• Support for specialized mobile, embedded and real-time operating systems (RTOS)
• Operation in resource-constrained environments - with limited memory, storage, processor and network bandwidth
• Real-time performance - with deterministically low latency and high throughput
• Heterogeneous interoperability - across programming languages, operating systems and processor types
• Deployment in dynamic, ad hoc environments - without system administration or servers
• Communicating over WAN, wireless and satellite networks - which can be intermittent, low bandwidth, high delay and lossy
• Meeting high-assurance requirements - including certification to safety and security standards

Because traditional enterprise messaging and integration technologies do not satisfy embedded and mobile requirements, developers have traditionally had to create their own custom communications infrastructure. These in-house solutions can be time-consuming and expensive to develop. They are also extremely costly to maintain as new requirements are introduced, personnel turns over, and systems become larger, more complex, more stovepipe and thus more brittle.

With a commercial alternative, RTI accelerates time-to-deployment while significantly reducing software lifecycle costs.

RTI Attribute	Benefits over Custom Middleware
Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Turnkey messaging infrastructure Tracks the latest operating system and development environment releases Provides an ecosystem of integrated technologies from RTI and partners	Saves time and costs otherwise required for internal middleware development, porting, integration, maintenance and support Easily evaluated against requirements; an in-house solution's capabilities, performance and scalability can not be known until it is complete Provides time and cost-certainty; eliminates risk that middleware development will take longer than expected
Standards compliant JMS, DDS and SQL applications programming interfaces (APIs) RTPS on-the-wire protocol	Familiar, well-documented interfaces and readily available training improve productivity of application developers (middleware users) Portability and interoperability provide vendor independence and ease integration of independently developed components
Robust Comprehensive feature set Performance and scalability headroom Broad platform, programming language and transport support	Meets current and future requirements, eliminating the risk that time-consuming and costly re-engineering will be required later
Eases integration Loosely-coupled integration model based on publish/subscribe Full interoperability across platforms and programming languages	Reduces overall system complexity and eliminates interdependencies between subsystems Individual components can be added or upgraded without impacting already running software New platforms and programming languages can be transparently introduced
Reliable Operationally proven in some of the world's most demanding systems Developed and tested in accordance with RTI's rigorous quality process	High technology readiness for mission-critical systems

Features of RTI's real-time messaging infrastructure

Available for embedded, mobile and real-time operating systems

In addition to support for enterprise operating systems such as Linux, Windows and Unix, RTI's real-time messaging infrastructure is available for all leading embedded, mobile and real-time operating systems (RTOS). These include:

• Linux - i86, x64 and PowerPC distributions
• Green Hills Software - INTEGRITY
• LynuxWorks - LynxOS
• Microsoft - Windows CE and Windows Mobile
• QNX
• Wind River Systems - VxWorks

RTI is continually adding support for new platforms, including separation kernels based on the Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) architecture. Please contact us for the latest availability information or to inquire about other platforms.

Eases application integration

RTI eases integration of embedded and mobile applications with each other, with enterprise applications, and into a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

• Applications using RTI's infrastructure are fully interoperable across programming languages, operating systems and processor types
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are available for C, C++, Java (JMS and DDS), .NET and Ada
• Message contents are automatically transformed so that they are interpreted correctly by applications written in different programming languages and running on processors with different native data representations
• RTI keeps in-memory data caches on embedded and mobile devices synchronized with enterprise databases
• RTI's messaging infrastructure is easily integrated with enterprise middleware including Application Servers, Complex Event Processing (CEP) engines, Enterprise Service Busses (ESBs) and visualization platforms

Supports resource-constrained systems

For resource-limited embedded and mobile systems that need to minimize Size, Weight and Power (SWAP), RTI features include:

• Fully deterministic memory utilization with no dynamic allocation required after system initialization
• No filesystem required - messages can be persisted in-memory and configuration can be fully programmatic
• Small footprint - with an extremely small-footprint version (as low as 130 KB) available for high assurance and severely resource limited systems

Real-time Quality of Service (QoS) and performance

RTI meets the demanding performance requirements of embedded real-time applications, including:

• Latency as low as 30 microseconds over Gigabit Ethernet with very high determinism and low jitter
• Application-to-application throughput as high as millions of messages per second with no inherent limit on overall system-wide capacity - aggregate throughput of hundreds of millions of messages per second can be achieved
• Visibility into and control over message lifespans and deadlines for timing-critical applications
• Fine-grained control over tradeoffs between latency, throughput, reliability and resource consumption
• Filtering based on time and content

RTI's peer-to-peer architecture is inherently real-time because there are no message broker, server or daemon processes introducing priority inversions: the scheduler determines the priority with which messages are sent and received.

Deployable in highly dynamic, ad hoc environments

RTI is well-suited to dynamic, ad hoc environments with no system administration or servers:

• RTI's infrastructure can be completely embedded within communicating applications, there are no external processes (such as message brokers or servers) that must be deployed or managed
• Applications can automatically discover each other: no configuration of hostnames or network addresses is required

Runs over a wide variety of networks

RTI provides extremely flexible transport support for mobile applications and systems deployed outside the enterprise:

• Out-of-the box support for LAN, WAN, secure (TLS), satellite and wireless communication over IPv4 and IPv6
• Reliable multicast for efficient broad data distribution
• Shared memory transport for high-performance inter-process communication between components running on the same node
• Pluggable interface for integration with other transports, including backplanes and switched fabrics, even those without IP support

Well-suited for mission-critical systems

RTI meets the requirements of the most demanding business and mission-critical applications:

• Fault tolerant infrastructure with no single point of failure at either the node or system level
• Automatic failover in the event that an application or node fails or becomes inaccessible
• Messages can be simultaneously sent over multiple transports and networks for redundancy and partitioning
• System-level introspection for health monitoring and application-managed high availability
• Technology proven over 12 years in hundred of the world's most demanding and mission-critical applications
• Products developed in accordance with RTI's rigorous quality process, with more source code and development time dedicated to Quality Assurance  (QA) than to technology development

More information

Learn more about RTI's real-time messaging solutions for embedded and mobile systems:

RTI Data Distribution Service - DDS and RTPS compliant messaging for C, C++, Java, .NET and Ada applications

Safety-Critical Edition - Small footprint version of RTI Data Distribution Service for high-assurance applications that safety or security certification or that are severely resource constrained

RTI Message Service - JMS and RTPS compliant messaging for Java applications