The Euromicro Technical Committee organizes a number of satellite events attached to its 16th International Real-Time Systems Conference. One of such events is RTN 2004, the 3rd International Workshop on Real-Time Networks, following the series of RTLIA workshops started in 2002.

RTN focuses on the current technological challenges of developing communication infrastructures that are real-time, reliable, pervasive and interoperable. These infrastrutures are the bottom layer that supports a myriath of services upon which modern societies depend in unprecedented ways. For example, military, transportation, telecommunications, industrial and space systems as well as environment, climate and assets monitoring achieved a level of performance that can only be sustained with more abundant, accurate and timely source information, which in turn is used to support better management, planning and control. However, as the sources of information spread out and the amount of generated information increases, the burden on the communication infrastructure grows, posing many technical challenges such as those related with achieving real-time operation, dependability, scalability and flexibility over different media and with the most diverse, including dynamic, topologies, possibly under severe resource constraints.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together people from industry and academia that are interested in all aspects of real-time communication. This year there will be a highlight on automotive networks, with a special section devoted to that topic. These types of networks are generating a growing interest either in industry as well as academia, with strongly supported contending protocols. The challenge remains in establishing the right combination between real-time operation, dependability, flexibility and cost.

The workshop will provide a relaxed forum to present and discuss new ideas, new research directions and to review current trends in this area. The workshop will be based on short presentations that should encourage discussion among the attendees.

Prospective authors are encouraged to address any issues about real-time, QoS and dependability in computer networks, particularly:

• Automotive networks (highlight, this year)
• LAN Technologies: industrial Ethernet, fieldbus networks, Myrinet, etc.
• Control methods for communication over LAN networks
• Wireless sensor networks
• Wired or wireless communication in intelligent buildings
• Ubiquitous computing for disaster response, mitigation and recovery
• Networked embedded systems
• Interoperability between hybrid wired/wireless networks
• Interoperability between LANs and PANs and between LANs and WANs
• Communication Technologies for e-Activities: e-health, e-monitoring, etc.
• IPV6 networking
• Support of IP-based applications
• Multimedia communication
• Evaluation and case studies
• Tools
• Industry experience reports

Statements which are innovative, controversial or that present new approaches are specially sought.

Submission of papers: People who would like to participate in this event are asked to submit a full paper to the workshop chairperson, Luis Almeida (lda@det.ua.pt). Submitted papers should follow the IEEE conference format and must not exceed 4 pages in length. File formats can be either pdf or postscript. The papers will be reviewed by the workshop Program Committee. All accepted papers will be made available to all participants a week before the workshop so that contributions can be examined prior to the event.

The workshop sessions will involve relatively short presentations followed by a discussion panel. After the workshop, authors will be asked to produce, by 23 July 2004, a final version of their papers that includes the issues covered in the discussions. These final versions will be included in the workshop proceedings that will then be sent to the authors.

To foster the workshop character the number of participants will be limited to 30. There will be a small charge for workshop registration. The workshop will be held in Catania (more details will come later). See the Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems website for information on the venue, hotel reservations and Catania.