  Parametric analysis is a powerful tool for designing modern embedded systems,
because it permits to explore the space of design parameters, and to check the
robustness of the system with respect to variations of some uncontrollable
variable. In this paper, we address the problem of parametric schedulability
analysis of distributed real-time systems scheduled by fixed priority. In
particular, we propose two different approaches to parametric analysis: the
first one is a novel technique based on classical schedulability analysis,
whereas the second approach is based on model checking of Parametric Timed
Automata (PTA).
  The proposed analytic method extends existing sensitivity analysis for single
processors to the case of a distributed system, supporting preemptive and
non-preemptive scheduling, jitters and unconstrained deadlines. Parametric
Timed Automata are used to model all possible behaviours of a distributed
system, and therefore it is a necessary and sufficient analysis. Both
techniques have been implemented in two software tools, and they have been
compared with classical holistic analysis on two meaningful test cases. The
results show that the analytic method provides results similar to classical
holistic analysis in a very efficient way, whereas the PTA approach is slower
but covers the entire space of solutions.
