1. |
- Zhou, Yuanbin, 1991-
(author)
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Synthesis of Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Modern safety-critical real-time systems are becoming more and more complex, due to sophisticated applications such as advanced driving assistance, automated driving, advanced infotainment, and applications involving machine learning and deep learning. This has led to increased requirements for the communication infrastructures. Real-time bus-based communication techniques, such as CAN and FlexRay, have been widely adopted for decades, due to their low cost and reliable communication capability. However, the bandwidth provided by these technologies is often not enough for modern safety-critical systems. Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a promising technique that can handle the increasing bandwidth requirements, while meeting real-time constraints and providing Ethernet compatible solutions. We have studied the synthesis of schedules and routes for TSN, in order to fulfill timing and reliability requirements for safety-critical systems. Functional safety is an important goal for such systems, to ensure that no unreasonable risks are taken. This involves handling random and systematic faults, both of which are considered in this work. We synthesize schedules and routes for TSN so that the probability of faulty transmission due to random faults is below a certain threshold.ASIL Decomposition, introduced in the automotive industry, is applied to handle systematic faults, while achieving overall cost minimization. In order to improve schedulability, preemption support in TSN has also been studied. Heuristic algorithms are proposed for all the above contributions to address scalability issues characterized for the constrained synthesis and optimization problem addressed.Traditional designs for safety-critical systems usually deploy a federated architecture, where several processors are available and each processor implements one dedicated function. An important goal is to achieve fault containment. However, due to the increasing complexity of modern safety-critical systems, this architecture is no longer scalable. Therefore, several tasks with different criticality levels are usually integrated on the same computing platform. A key aspect for such systems is to achieve the required independence between tasks at different criticality levels and to guarantee that they do not interfere each other. We have developed a partitioned scheduling technique for mixed-criticality systems to achieve temporal independence, while minimizing the CPU usage.
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2. |
- Cai, Simin
(author)
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Systematic Design of Data Management for Real-Time Data-Intensive Applications
- 2017
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Modern real-time data-intensive systems generate large amounts of data that are processed using complex data-related computations such as data aggregation. In order to maintain the consistency of data, such computations must be both logically correct (producing correct and consistent results) and temporally correct (completing before specified deadlines). One solution to ensure logical and temporal correctness is to model these computations as transactions and manage them using a Real-Time Database Management System (RTDBMS). Ideally, depending on the particular system, the transactions are customized with the desired logical and temporal correctness properties, which are achieved by the customized RTDBMS with appropriate run-time mechanisms. However, developing such a data management solution with provided guarantees is not easy, partly due to inadequate support for systematic analysis during the design. Firstly, designers do not have means to identify the characteristics of the computations, especially data aggregation, and to reason about their implications. Design flaws might not be discovered, and thus they may be propagated to the implementation. Secondly, trade-off analysis of conflicting properties, such as conflicts between transaction isolation and temporal correctness, is mainly performed ad-hoc, which increases the risk of unpredictable behavior.In this thesis, we propose a systematic approach to develop transaction-based data management with data aggregation support for real-time systems. Our approach includes the following contributions: (i) a taxonomy of data aggregation, (ii) a process for customizing transaction models and RTDBMS, and (iii) a pattern-based method of modeling transactions in the timed automata framework, which we show how to verify with respect to transaction isolation and temporal correctness. Our proposed taxonomy of data aggregation processes helps in identifying their common and variable characteristics, based on which their implications can be reasoned about. Our proposed process allows designers to derive transaction models with desired properties for the data-related computations from system requirements, and decide the appropriate run-time mechanisms for the customized RTDBMS to achieve the desired properties. To perform systematic trade-off analysis between transaction isolation and temporal correctness specifically, we propose a method to create formal models of transactions with concurrency control, based on which the isolation and temporal correctness properties can be verified by model checking, using the UPPAAL tool. By applying the proposed approach to the development of an industrial demonstrator, we validate the applicability of our approach.
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3. |
- Hoang, Hoai, 1976-
(author)
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Enhancing the Performance of Distributed Real-time Systems
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Advanced embedded systems can consist of many sensors, actuators and processors that are deployed on one or several boards, while having a demand of interacting with each other and sharing resources. Communication between different components usually has strict timing constraints. There is thus a strong need to provide solutions for time critical communication. This thesis focuses on both the support of real-time services over standard switched Ethernet networks and the improvement of systems' real-time characteristics, such as reducing delay and jitter in processors and on communication links.Switched Ethernet has been chosen in this work because of its major advantages in industry; it supports higher bit-rates than most other current LAN (Local Area Network) technologies, including field buses, still at a low cost. We propose using a star network topology with a single Ethernet switch. Each node is connected to a separate port of the switch via a full-duplex link, thereby eliminating collisions. A solid real-time communication protocol for switched Ethernet networks is proposed in the thesis, including a real-time layer between the Ethernet layer and the TCP/IP suite. The network has the capability of supporting both real-time and non real-time traffic and assuring adaptation to the surrounding protocol standards.Most embedded systems work in a dynamic environment, where the precise behavior of the network traffic can usually not be predicted. To support real-time services, we have chosen the Earliest Deadline scheduling algorithm (EDF) because of its optimality, high efficiency and suitability for being used in adaptive schemes. To be able to increase the amount of guaranteed real-time traffic, the notion of Asymmetric Deadline Partitioning Scheme (ADPS) is introduced. ADPS allows distribution of the end-to-end deadline of a message, sent from any source node in the network to any destination node via the switch, into two sub-deadlines, one for each hop according to the load of the physical link that it must traverse.For the EDF scheduling algorithm, the feasibility test is one of the most important techniques that provides us with information about whether or not the real-time traffic can be guaranteed by the network. With the same computational complexity as the feasibility test, a method has been developed to compute the minimum EDF-feasible deadline for a real-time task. The importance of this method in real-time applications lies in that it can be effectively used to reduce the response times of specific control activities or limit their input-output jitter. To allow more flexibility in the control of delay and jitter in real-time systems, a general approach for reducing task deadlines according to the requirements of individual tasks has been developed. The method allows the user to specify a deadline reduction factor for each task in order to better exploit the available slack according to the tasks' actual requirements.
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4. |
- Johansson, Bjarne, 1977-
(author)
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Dependable Distributed Control System : Redundancy and Concurrency defects
- 2022
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Intelligent devices, interconnectivity, and information exchange are characteristics often associated with Industry 4.0. A peer-to-peer-oriented architecture with the network as the system center succeeds the traditional controller-centric topology used in today's distributed control systems, improving information exchange in future designs. The network-centric architecture allows IT-solution such as cloud, fog, and edge computing to enter the automation industry. IT-solution that rely on virtualization techniques such as virtual machines and containers. Virtualization technology, combined with virtual instance management, provide the famous elasticity that cloud computing offer. Container management systems like Kubernetes can scale the number of containers to match the service demand and redeploy containers affected by failures.Distributed control systems constitute automation infrastructure core in many critical applications and domains. The criticality puts high dependability requirements upon the systems, i.e., dependability is essential. High-quality software and redundancy solutions are examples of traditional ways to increase dependability. Dependability is the common denominator for the challenges addressed in this thesis. Challenges that range from concurrency defect localization with static code analysis to utilization of failure recovery mechanisms provided by container management systems in a control system context.We evaluate the feasibility of locating concurrency defects in embedded industrial software with static code analysis. Furthermore, we propose a deployment agnostic failure detection and role selection mechanism for controller redundancy in a network-centric context. Finally, we use the container management system Kubernetes to orchestrate a cluster of virtualized controllers. We evaluate the failure recovery properties of the container management system in combination with redundant virtualized controllers - redundant controllers using the proposed failure detection and role selection solution.
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5. |
- Ashjaei, Mohammad, 1980-
(author)
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Real-Time Communication over Switched Ethernet with Resource Reservation
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Due to the need for advanced computer-controlled functionality in distributed embedded systems the requirements on network communication are becoming overly intricate. This dissertation targets the requirements that are concerned with real-time guarantees, run-time adaptation, resource utilization and flexibility during the development. The Flexible Time-Triggered Switched Ethernet (FTT-SE) and Hard Real-Time Ethernet Switching (HaRTES) network architectures have emerged as two promising solutions that can cater for these requirements. However, these architectures do not support multi-hop communication as they are originally developed for single-switch networks. This dissertation presents a fundamental contribution in multi-hop real-time communication over the FTT-SE and HaRTES architectures targeting the above mentioned requirements. It proposes and evaluates various solutions for scheduling and forwarding the traffic through multiple switches in these architectures. These solutions preserve the ability of dynamic adaptation without jeopardizing real-time properties of the architectures. Moreover, the dissertation presents schedulability analyses for the timeliness verification and evaluation of the proposed solutions as well as several protocols to support run-time adaptation in the multi-hop communication. Finally, the work led to an end-to-end resource reservation framework, based on the proposed multi-hop architectures, to support flexibility during the development of the systems. The efficiency of the proposed solutions is evaluated on various case studies that are inspired from industrial systems.
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6. |
- Hjertström, Andreas, 1972-
(author)
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Information Centric Development of Component-Based Embedded Real-Time Systems
- 2009
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis presents new techniques for data management of run-time data objectsin component-based embedded real-time systems. These techniques enabledata to be modeled, analyzed and structured to achieve data managementduring development, maintenance and execution.The evolution of real-time embedded systems has resulted in an increasedsystem complexity beyond what was thought possible just a few years ago.Over the years, new techniques and tools have been developed to manage softwareand communication complexity. However, as this thesis show, currenttechniques and tools for data management are not sufficient. Today, developmentof real-time embedded systems focuses on the function aspects of thesystem, in most cases disregarding data management.The lack of proper design-time data management often results in ineffectivedocumentation routines and poor overall system knowledge. Contemporarytechniques to manage run-time data do not satisfy demands on flexibility,maintainability and extensibility. Based on an industrial case-study that identifiesa number of problems within current data management techniques, bothduring design-time and run-time, it is clear that data management needs to beincorporated as an integral part of the development of the entire system architecture.As a remedy to the identified problems, we propose a design-time data entityapproach, where the importance of data in the system is elevated to beincluded in the entire design phase with proper documentation, properties, dependenciesand analysis methods to increase the overall system knowledge.Furthermore, to efficiently manage data during run-time, we introduce databaseproxies to enable the fusion between two existing techniques; ComponentBased Software Engineering (CBSE) and Real-Time Database ManagementSystems (RTDBMS). A database proxy allows components to be decoupledfrom the underlying data management strategy without violating the componentencapsulation and communication interface.
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7. |
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8. |
- Paniagua, Cristina
(author)
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Autonomous Runtime System of Systems Interoperability
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The current technological environment is evolving increasingly fast, and the development of new devices, technologies, and architectures has opened an emergent paradigm where the digital and physical world work together, leading to a new digitalizacion era.For the industry, the shift of paradigm represents the start of the fourth industrial revolution, also called Industry 4.0. The Industry 4.0 approach contributes to addressing continuously evolving industrial requirements, and promotes the rise of efficiency and sustainability on industrial production. The implementation and use of systems based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in conjunction with the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) into System of Systems (SoS) have been extended during the last decades in numerous scenarios contributing to reach the Industry 4.0 vision.The new industrial paradigm leads to growing complexity, thus, potentially increasing the development and maintenance costs. Significant engineering time is dedicated to the integration and interoperability of different components. Therefore, one of the major barriers to this approach is the lack of interoperability between heterogeneous systems.This thesis proposes a set of architectural design principles and tools in order to reduce engineering effort by means of finding solutions that enable autonomous integration and increase interoperability without human intervention. The research is focused on the SoS field, taking service definition and SoS integration into account.The presented solution is an service contract translation system that can aid in the generation of new service consumer interfaces at both compile time and runtime. The proposed approach requires a new point of view in the service contract that can provide a holistic description of the information required for the generation of consumer interfaces. The proposed system makes use of service interface descriptions to dynamically instantiate a new autonomously generated interface that solves communication mismatches between the provider and the consumer. To illustrate the potential of this approach, a prototype of the system has been implemented and testedIn addition, aspects related to interoperability, such as the many IoT frameworks in the current market, naming conventions, syntactic modeling and translation, and security, are also partially analyzed.
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9. |
- Pop, Traian, 1975-
(author)
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Analysis and Optimisation of Distributed Embedded Systems with Heterogeneous Scheduling Policies
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The growing amount and diversity of functions to be implemented by the current and future embedded applications (like, for example, in automotive electronics) have shown that, in many cases, time-triggered and event-triggered functions have to coexist on the computing nodes and to interact over the communication infrastructure. When time-triggered and event-triggered activities have to share the same processing node, a natural way for the execution support can be provided through a hierarchical scheduler. Similarly, when such heterogeneous applications are mapped over a distributed architecture, the communication infrastructure should allow for message exchange in both time-triggered and event-triggered manner in order to ensure a straightforward interconnection of heterogeneous components.This thesis studies aspects related to the analysis and design optimisation for safety-critical hard real-time applications running on hierarchically scheduled distributed embedded systems. It first provides the basis for the timing analysis of the activities in such a system, by carefully taking into consideration all the interferences that appear at run-time between the processes executed according to different scheduling policies. Moreover, due to the distributed nature of the architecture, message delays are also taken into consideration during the timing analysis. Once the schedulability analysis has been provided, the entire system can be optimised by adjusting its configuration parameters. In our work, the entire optimisation process is directed by the results from the timing analysis, with the goal that in the end the timing constraints of the application are satisfied. The analysis and design methodology proposed in the first part of the thesis is applied next on the particular category of distributed systems that use FlexRay as a communication protocol. We start by providing a schedulability analysis for messages transmitted over a FlexRay bus, and then by proposing a bus access optimisation algorithm that aims at improving the timing properties of the entire system.For all the problems that we investigated, we have carried out extensive experiments in order to measure the efficiency of the proposed solutions. The results have confirmed both the importance of the addressed aspects during system-level design, and the applicability of our techniques for analysing and optimising the studied systems.
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