PIERES: A Playground for Network Interrupt Experiments on Real-Time Embedded Systems in the IoT

TL;DR

This paper introduces PIERES, a flexible experimental playground for studying the impact of network interrupts on real-time embedded IoT systems, enabling researchers to simulate and analyze interrupt behaviors.

Contribution

It provides a novel, adaptable platform with various network interface implementations and utilities for investigating network interrupt effects on real-time IoT devices.

Findings

Interrupt handling strategies significantly affect execution times.

Different load types influence interrupt response and system timing.

The platform facilitates future research on network interrupt impacts.

Abstract

IoT devices have become an integral part of our lives and the industry. Many of these devices run real-time systems or are used as part of them. As these devices receive network packets over IP networks, the network interface informs the CPU about their arrival using interrupts that might preempt critical processes. Therefore, the question arises whether network interrupts pose a threat to the real-timeness of these devices. However, there are few tools to investigate this issue. We present a playground which enables researchers to conduct experiments in the context of network interrupt simulation. The playground comprises different network interface controller implementations, load generators and timing utilities. It forms a flexible and easy to use foundation for future network interrupt research. We conduct two verification experiments and two real world examples. The latter give insight into the impact of the interrupt handling strategy parameters and the influence of different load types on the execution time with respect to these parameters.