Scheduling Analysis of UAV Flight Control Workloads using Raspberry Pi 5 Using PREEMPT_RT Linux
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866911611694874624 |
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| author | Giacomossi, Luiz Forsberg, Håkan Tomasic, Ivan Çürüklü, Baran Cucinotta, Tommaso |
| author_facet | Giacomossi, Luiz Forsberg, Håkan Tomasic, Ivan Çürüklü, Baran Cucinotta, Tommaso |
| contents | Modern UAV architectures increasingly aim to unify high-level autonomy and low-level flight control on a single General-Purpose Operating System (GPOS). However, complex multi-core System-on-Chips (SoCs) introduce significant timing indeterminism due to shared resource contention. This paper performs an architectural analysis of the PREEMPT RT Linux kernel on a Raspberry Pi 5, specifically isolating the impact of kernel activation paths (deferred execution SoftIRQs versus real-time direct activation) on a 250 Hz control loop. Results show that under heavy stress, the standard kernel is unsuitable, exhibiting worst-case latencies exceeding 9 ms. In contrast, PREEMPT RT reduced the worst-case latency by nearly 88 percent to under 225 microseconds, enforcing a direct wake-up path that mitigates OS noise. These findings demonstrate that while PREEMPT RT resolves scheduling variance, the residual jitter on modern SoCs is primarily driven by hardware memory contention. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_19275 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Scheduling Analysis of UAV Flight Control Workloads using Raspberry Pi 5 Using PREEMPT_RT Linux Giacomossi, Luiz Forsberg, Håkan Tomasic, Ivan Çürüklü, Baran Cucinotta, Tommaso Systems and Control Operating Systems Robotics Modern UAV architectures increasingly aim to unify high-level autonomy and low-level flight control on a single General-Purpose Operating System (GPOS). However, complex multi-core System-on-Chips (SoCs) introduce significant timing indeterminism due to shared resource contention. This paper performs an architectural analysis of the PREEMPT RT Linux kernel on a Raspberry Pi 5, specifically isolating the impact of kernel activation paths (deferred execution SoftIRQs versus real-time direct activation) on a 250 Hz control loop. Results show that under heavy stress, the standard kernel is unsuitable, exhibiting worst-case latencies exceeding 9 ms. In contrast, PREEMPT RT reduced the worst-case latency by nearly 88 percent to under 225 microseconds, enforcing a direct wake-up path that mitigates OS noise. These findings demonstrate that while PREEMPT RT resolves scheduling variance, the residual jitter on modern SoCs is primarily driven by hardware memory contention. |
| title | Scheduling Analysis of UAV Flight Control Workloads using Raspberry Pi 5 Using PREEMPT_RT Linux |
| topic | Systems and Control Operating Systems Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19275 |