Dependability assessment of by-wire control systems using fault injection

This paper is focused on the validation by means of physical fault injection at pin-level of a time-triggered communication controller: the TTP/C versions C1 and C2. The controller is a commercial off-the-shelf product used in the design of by-wire systems. Drive-by-wire and fly-by-wire active safety controls aim to prevent accidents. They are considered to be of critical importance because a serious situation may directly affect user safety. Therefore, dependability assessment is vital in their design. This work was funded by the European project `Fault Injection for TTA¿ and it is divided into two parts. In the first part, there is a verification of the dependability specifications of the TTP communication protocol, based on TTA, in the presence of faults directly induced in communication lines. The second part contains a validation and improvement proposal for the architecture in case of data errors. Such errors are due to faults that occurred during writing (or reading) actions on memory or during data storage.Blanc Clavero, S.; Bonastre Pina, AM.; Gil, P. (2009). Dependability assessment of by-wire control systems using fault injection. Journal of Systems Architecture. 55(2):102-113. doi:10.1016/j.sysarc.2008.09.003S10211355

Embedded System Design

A unique feature of this open access textbook is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental knowledge in embedded systems, with applications in cyber-physical systems and the Internet of things. It starts with an introduction to the field and a survey of specification models and languages for embedded and cyber-physical systems. It provides a brief overview of hardware devices used for such systems and presents the essentials of system software for embedded systems, including real-time operating systems. The author also discusses evaluation and validation techniques for embedded systems and provides an overview of techniques for mapping applications to execution platforms, including multi-core platforms. Embedded systems have to operate under tight constraints and, hence, the book also contains a selected set of optimization techniques, including software optimization techniques. The book closes with a brief survey on testing. This fourth edition has been updated and revised to reflect new trends and technologies, such as the importance of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the Internet of things (IoT), the evolution of single-core processors to multi-core processors, and the increased importance of energy efficiency and thermal issues

Embedded System Design

A unique feature of this open access textbook is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental knowledge in embedded systems, with applications in cyber-physical systems and the Internet of things. It starts with an introduction to the field and a survey of specification models and languages for embedded and cyber-physical systems. It provides a brief overview of hardware devices used for such systems and presents the essentials of system software for embedded systems, including real-time operating systems. The author also discusses evaluation and validation techniques for embedded systems and provides an overview of techniques for mapping applications to execution platforms, including multi-core platforms. Embedded systems have to operate under tight constraints and, hence, the book also contains a selected set of optimization techniques, including software optimization techniques. The book closes with a brief survey on testing. This fourth edition has been updated and revised to reflect new trends and technologies, such as the importance of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the Internet of things (IoT), the evolution of single-core processors to multi-core processors, and the increased importance of energy efficiency and thermal issues

High integrity hardware-software codesign

Programmable logic devices (PLDs) are increasing in complexity and speed, and are being used as important components in safety-critical systems. Methods for developing high-integrity software for these systems are well-known, but this is not true for programmable logic. We propose a process for developing a system incorporating software and PLDs, suitable for safety critical systems of the highest levels of integrity. This process incorporates the use of Synchronous Receptive Process Theory as a semantic basis for specifying and proving properties of programs executing on PLDs, and extends the use of SPARK Ada from a programming language for safety-critical systems software to cover the interface between software and programmable logic. We have validated this approach through the specification and development of a substantial safety-critical system incorporating both software and programmable logic components, and the development of tools to support this work. This enables us to claim that the methods demonstrated are not only feasible but also scale up to realistic system sizes, allowing development of such safety-critical software-hardware systems to the levels required by current system safety standards

Resilience-Building Technologies: State of Knowledge -- ReSIST NoE Deliverable D12

This document is the first product of work package WP2, "Resilience-building and -scaling technologies", in the programme of jointly executed research (JER) of the ReSIST Network of Excellenc

Comunicações confiáveis sem-fios para redes veiculares

Vehicular communications are a promising field of research, with numerous potential services that can enhance traffic experience. Road safety is the most important objective behind the development of wireless vehicular networks, since many of the current accidents and fatalities could be avoided if vehicles had the ability to share information among them, with the road-side infrastructure and other road users. A future with safe, efficient and comfortable road transportation systems is envisaged by the different traffic stakeholders - users, manufacturers, road operators and public authorities. Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications will contribute to achieve this goal, as well as other technological progress, such as automated driving or improved road infrastructure based on advanced sensoring and the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Despite these significant benefits, the design of vehicular communications systems poses difficult challenges, mainly due to the very dynamic environments in which they operate. In order to attain the safety-critical requirements involved in this type of scenarios, careful planning is necessary, so that a trustworthy behaviour of the system can be achieved. Dependability and real-time systems concepts provide essential tools to handle this challenging task of enabling determinism and fault-tolerance in vehicular networks. This thesis aims to address some of these issues by proposing architectures and implementing mechanisms that improve the dependability levels of realtime vehicular communications. The developed strategies always try to preserve the required system’s flexibity, a fundamental property in such unpredictable scenarios, where unexpected events may occur and force the system to quickly adapt to the new circumnstances.The core contribution of this thesis focuses on the design of a fault-tolerant architecture for infrastructure-based vehicular networks. It encompasses a set of mechanisms that allow error detection and fault-tolerant behaviour both in the mobile and static nodes of the network. Road-side infrastructure plays a key role in this context, since it provides the support for coordinating all communications taking place in the wireless medium. Furthermore, it is also responsible for admission control policies and exchanging information with the backbone network. The proposed methods rely on a deterministic medium access control (MAC) protocol that provides real-time guarantees in wireless channel access, ensuring that communications take place before a given deadline. However, the presented solutions are generic and can be easily adapted to other protocols and wireless technologies. Interference mitigation techniques, mechanisms to enforce fail-silent behaviour and redundancy schemes are introduced in this work, so that vehicular communications systems may present higher dependability levels. In addition to this, all of these methods are included in the design of vehicular network components, guaranteeing that the real-time constraints are still fulfilled. In conclusion, wireless vehicular networks hold the potential to drastically improve road safety. However, these systems should present dependable behaviour in order to reliably prevent the occurrence of catastrophic events under all possible traffic scenarios.As comunicações veiculares são uma área de investigação bastante promissora, com inúmeros potenciais serviços que podem melhorar a experiência vivida no tráfego. A segurança rodoviária é o objectivo mais importante por detrás do desenvolvimento das redes veiculares sem-fios, visto que muitos dos atuais acidentes e vítimas mortais poderiam ser evitados caso os veículos tivessem a capacidade de trocar informação entre eles, com a infraestrutura rodoviária e outros utilizadores da estrada. Um futuro com sistemas de transporte rodoviário seguros, eficientes e confortáveis é algo ambicionado pelas diferentes partes envolvidas - utilizadores, fabricantes, operadores da infraestrutura e autoridades públicas. As aplicações de Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte (ITS) cooperativas vão contribuir para alcançar este propósito, em conjunto com outros avanços tecnológicos, nomeadamente a condução autónoma ou uma melhor infraestrutura rodoviária baseada em sensorização avançada e no paradigma da Internet das Coisas (IoT). Apesar destes benefícios significativos, o desenho de sistemas de comunicações veiculares coloca desafios difíceis, em grande parte devido aos ambientes extremamente dinâmicos em que estes operam. De modo a atingir os requisitos de segurança crítica envolvidos neste tipo de cenários, é necessário um cuidadoso planeamento por forma a que o sistema apresente um comportamento confiável. Conceitos de dependabilidade e de sistemas de tempo-real constituem ferramentas essenciais para lidar com esta desafiante tarefa de dotar as redes veiculares de determinismo e tolerância a faltas. Esta tese pretende endereçar alguns destes problemas através da proposta de arquitecturas e da implementação de mecanismos que melhorem os níveis da dependabilidade das comunicações veiculares de tempo-real. As estratégias desenvolvidas tentam sempre preservar a necessária flexibilidade do sistema, uma propriedade fundamental em cenários tão imprevisíveis, onde eventos inesperados podem ocorrer e forçar o sistema a adaptar-se rapidamente às novas circunstâncias.A contribuição principal desta tese foca-se no desenho de uma arquitectura tolerante a faltas para redes veiculares com suporte da infraestrutura de beira de estrada. Esta arquitectura engloba um conjunto de mecanismos que permite detecção de erros e comportamento tolerante a faltas, tanto nos nós móveis como nos nós estáticos da rede. A infraestrutura de beira de estrada desempenha um papel fundamental neste contexto, pois fornece o suporte que permite coordenar todas as comunicações que ocorrem no meio sem-fios. Para além disso, é também responsável pelos mecanismos de controlo de admissão e pela troca de informação com a rede de transporte. Os métodos propostos baseiam-se num protocolo determinístico de controlo de acesso ao meio (MAC) que fornece garantias de tempo-real no accesso ao canal semfios, assegurando que as comunicações ocorrem antes de um determinado limite temporal. No entanto, as soluções apresentadas são genéricas e podem ser facilmente adaptadas a outros protocolos e tecnologias sem-fios. Neste trabalho são introduzidas técnicas de mitigação de interferência, mecanismos para assegurar comportamento falha-silêncio e esquemas de redundância, de modo a que os sistemas de comunicações veiculares apresentem elevados níveis de dependabilidade. Além disso, todos estes métodos são incorporados no desenho dos componentes da rede veicular, guarantindo que as restrições de tempo-real continuam a ser cumpridas. Em suma, as redes veiculares sem-fios têm o potential para melhorar drasticamente a segurança rodoviária. Contudo, estes sistemas precisam de apresentar um comportamento confiável, de forma a prevenir a ocorrência de eventos catastróficos em todos os cenários de tráfego possíveis.Programa Doutoral em Telecomunicaçõe

Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics

The purpose of the workshop was to present results and original concepts for electronics research and development relevant to particle physics experiments as well as accelerator and beam instrumentation at future facilities; to review the status of electronics for the LHC experiments; to identify and encourage common efforts for the development of electronics; and to promote information exchange and collaboration in the relevant engineering and physics communities