A neglected/ignored research topic in real-time systems: timeliness in mesosynchronous real-time distributed systems

Traditional real-time computing concepts and techniques are focused on static, synchronous, relatively small-scale, mostly centralized, device-level subsystems. Many real-time systems, particularly distributed ones, are relatively large-scale, above the device level, and at least partially dynamic and asynchronous. We call such systems "mesosynchronous." For example, mesosynchronous systems often are found in military surveillance and force projection platforms, and in network-centric warfare (plus civilian domains). Hence the lives of both friends and foes depend on the timeliness properties of such systems being dependably acceptable according to application- and situation-specific criteria. The real-time research community has historically failed to perceive and appreciate this - admittedly difficult and domain-knowledge intensive - problem, especially for end-to-end timeliness in distributed mesosynchronous real-time systems