Accelerating Probabilistic Response-Time Analysis: Revised Critical Instant and Optimized Convolution

Abstract

Accurate estimation of the Worst-Case Deadline Failure Probability (WCDFP) has attracted growing attention as a means to provide safety assurances in complex systems such as robotic platforms and autonomous vehicles. WCDFP quantifies the likelihood of deadline misses under the most pessimistic operating conditions, and safe estimation is essential for dependable real-time applications. However, achieving high accuracy in WCDFP estimation often incurs significant computational cost. Recent studies have revealed that the classical assumption of the critical instant, the activation pattern traditionally considered to trigger the worst-case behavior, can lead to underestimation of WCDFP in probabilistic settings. This observation motivates the use of a revised critical instant formulation that more faithfully captures the true worst-case scenario. This paper investigates convolution-based methods for WCDFP estimation under this revised setting and proposes an optimization technique that accelerates convolution by improving the merge order. Extensive experiments with diverse execution-time distributions demonstrate that the proposed optimized Aggregate Convolution reduces computation time by up to an order of magnitude compared to Sequential Convolution, while retaining accurate and safe-sided WCDFP estimates. These results highlight the potential of the approach to provide both efficiency and reliability in probabilistic timing analysis for safety-critical real-time applications.