Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Rate monotonic scheduling
     
         A means of {scheduling} the time allocated to
        periodic {hard-deadline} {real-time} users of a resource.  The
        users are assigned priorities such that a shorter fixed period
        between deadlines is associated with a higher priority.
     
        Rate monotonic scheduling provides a low-overhead, reasonably
        resource-efficient means of guaranteeing that all users will
        meet their deadlines provided that certain analytical
        equations are satisfied during the system design.  It avoids
        the design complexity of {time-line scheduling} and the
        overhead of dynamic approaches such as {earliest-deadline
        scheduling}.
     
        [D. R. Wilcox, Naval Ocean Systems Center Technical Report
        1310, August 1989, "Periodic Phase Adjustment Distributed
        Clock Synchronization in the Hard Realtime Environment",
        p. 9].
     
        (1996-03-23)