%0 Journal Article %T Developing a Novel Shared-Clock Scheduling Protocol for Highly-Predictable Distributed Real-Time Embedded Systems %J American Journal of Intelligent Systems %@ 2165-8994 %D 2012 %I %R 10.5923/j.ajis.20120205.06 %X The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol is widely used in the development of distributed real-time embedded systems. It has previously been shown that a ˇ°Shared-Clockˇ± (S-C) scheduling algorithm can be used along with CAN protocol to implement time-triggered network architectures. Previous work in this area has led to the development of four S-C scheduling protocols called TTC-SCC1, TTC-SCC2, TTC-SCC3 and TTC-SCC4 schedulers. This paper first reviews the four schedulers. Second, the paper provides a more general model for the TTC-SCC2 scheduler. Third, the limitations of the various S-C schedulers are discussed and an alternative S-C scheduling protocol is developed; which is referred to as TTC-SCC5 scheduler. The five schedulers are then evaluated and compared against a number of criteria including jitter behavior and resource requirements for practical implementation on low-cost embedded microcontrollers. The results presented in the paper show that the TTC-SCC5 scheduler is advantageous over the others since it integrates their key features while maintaining low implementation costs. %K Time-Triggered %K Co-Operative %K Shared-Clock %K Scheduler %K Controller Area Network %K Master %K Slave %K Jitter %K Message Latency %K Failure Detection Time %U http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.ajis.20120205.06.html