Scope of the Conference

The IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) is the premier conference in the field of real-time systems, where researchers and practitioners showcase innovations covering all aspects of real-time systems, including theory, design, analysis, implementation, verification, evaluation, and experience.

RTSS an expansive and inclusive event. RTSS’25, the 46th edition of the event, continues the tradition of embracing new and emerging areas of real-time systems research.

Tracks

RTSS’25 welcomes submissions of high-quality, original research papers related to both real-time systems theory and practice. Manuscripts may be submitted to either the real-time systems and foundations track (Track 1) or the design and applications track (Track 2), which covers Cyber-Physical Systems, HW-SW integration and system-level design, and Internet of Things (IoT).

Timing Requirements

To be in scope, ALL submissions must explicitly address some form of real-time requirements / constraints. 

Classical examples of real-time requirements include (but are not limited to) deadlines, response-time bounds, delay expectations such as thresholds on acceptable tail latency, as well as stochastic notions of timeliness.

Other forms of real-time requirements may be considered in scope if the submission provides a compelling justification that the problem requires some non-trivial resource allocation, programming, scheduling, or design approach to satisfy those real-time requirements.

As an example, improving the average-case performance of a program without regard to other criteria is not considered as addressing a real-time requirement. However, improving the average-case performance while simultaneous ensuring that the worst-case performance or execution time variability is not made worse, is considered as addressing a real-time requirement, since it facilitates the development of quantifiably better real-time systems.

RTSS especially welcomes new and emerging topics that address novel aspects of real-time requirements as stated above. Such topics may include machine learning techniques for the design and analysis of real-time systems, system design approaches for achieving real-time machine learning, resource management in autonomous systems, system-level solutions for real-time applications exploiting domain-specific accelerators, etc.

Surveys and User Studies

Empirical survey-based research focused on the real-time systems field is also welcome. This type of research uses surveys, questionnaires, interviews, use-cases, or other empirical techniques to obtain information about the past / current / future state of play in the research, design, development, verification, validation, and deployment of real-time systems.

(Note that literature surveys that classify, review, and summarize existing research papers are not considered empirical research and are not in scope of the conference.)

Proceedings and Awards

All accepted papers will appear in the main program and proceedings.

A selection of papers will receive recognition as outstanding papers and will be highlighted as such in the proceedings. Best paper and best student paper awards will be presented at the conference, along with an award for the best presentation. (Note that submissions are eligible for the best student paper award provided that the first author is a student as of the submission deadline.)