The journal Real-Time Systems publishes papers that concentrate on real-time computing principles and applications. The contents include research papers, invited papers, project reports and case studies, standards and corresponding proposals for general discussion, and a partitioned tutorial on real-time systems as a continuing series.

The range of coverage is broad, including requirements engineering, specification and verification techniques, design methods and tools, programming languages, operating systems, scheduling algorithms, architecture, hardware and interfacing, dependability and safety, distributed and other novel architectures, wired and wireless communications, wireless sensor systems, distributed databases, artificial intelligence techniques, expert systems, and application case studies.

Real-time systems find application in command and control systems, process control, flight control, avionics, defense systems, vision and robotics, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, and an abundance of embedded systems.