Call for papers
47th IEEE Symposium on Real-Time Systems
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 present innovations covering all aspects of real-time systems, including theory, design, analysis, implementation, verification, evaluation, and practical experience.
RTSS is known for being welcoming and wide-ranging. The 47th edition, RTSS’26, proudly continues this tradition by embracing both well-established topics and bold, emerging directions in real-time systems research.
Timing Requirements
To be in scope, ALL submissions must explicitly address some form of real-time requirements / constraints.
Common examples of real-time requirements include (but are not limited to) deadlines, response-time bounds, thresholds on acceptable tail latencies as commonly found in service level agreements, as well as statistical and 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 nontrivial resource allocation, programming, scheduling, or design approach to satisfy timing-predicability 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 simultaneously ensuring that the worst-case latency 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.
When in doubt, please contact the track chairs for clarification.
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 solely 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, provided they are presented at the conference. Note that at submission, authors have to confirm that they commit to presenting the paper live at the conference.
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. Submissions are eligible for the best student paper award provided that the first author is a student at the time of the submission deadline.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence
Please refer to the IEEE TCRTS Transparency policy for guidelines on the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (see the section titled “Responsible Use of Generative-AI”).
Tracks
RTSS’26 welcomes high-quality submissions of 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).