TRACTABLE DATA-FLOW ANALYSIS FOR DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Automated behavior analysis is a valuable technique in the development and maintainence of distributed systems. In this paper, we present a tractable dataflow analysis technique for the detection of unreachable states and actions in distributed systems. The technique follows an approximate approach described by Reif and Smolka, but delivers a more accurate result in assessing unreachable states and actions. The higher accuracy is achieved by the use of two concepts: action dependency and history sets. Although the technique, does not exhaustively detect all possible errors, it detects nontrivial errors with a worst-case complexity quadratic to the system size. It can be automated and applied to systems with arbitrary loops and nondeterministic structures. The technique thus provides practical and tractable behavior analysis for preliminary designs of distributed systems. This makes it an ideal candidate for an interactive checker in software development tools. The technique is illustrated with case studies of a pump control system and an erroneous distributed program. Results from a prototype implementation are presented

Automated Synthesis of SEU Tolerant Architectures from OO Descriptions

SEU faults are a well-known problem in aerospace environment but recently their relevance grew up also at ground level in commodity applications coupled, in this frame, with strong economic constraints in terms of costs reduction. On the other hand, latest hardware description languages and synthesis tools allow reducing the boundary between software and hardware domains making the high-level descriptions of hardware components very similar to software programs. Moving from these considerations, the present paper analyses the possibility of reusing Software Implemented Hardware Fault Tolerance (SIHFT) techniques, typically exploited in micro-processor based systems, to design SEU tolerant architectures. The main characteristics of SIHFT techniques have been examined as well as how they have to be modified to be compatible with the synthesis flow. A complete environment is provided to automate the design instrumentation using the proposed techniques, and to perform fault injection experiments both at behavioural and gate level. Preliminary results presented in this paper show the effectiveness of the approach in terms of reliability improvement and reduced design effort

Distributed probabilistic-data-association-based soft reception employing base station cooperation in MIMO-aided multiuser multicell systems

Intercell cochannel interference (CCI) mitigation is investigated in the context of cellular systems relying on dense frequency reuse (FR). A distributed base-station (BS)-cooperation-aided soft reception scheme using the probabilistic data association (PDA) algorithm and soft combining (SC) is proposed for the uplink of multiuser multicell MIMO systems. The realistic 19-cell hexagonal cellular model relying on unity FR is considered, where both the BSs and the mobile stations (MSs) are equipped with multiple antennas. Local-cooperation-based message passing is used, instead of a global message passing chain for the sake of reducing the backhaul traffic. The PDA algorithm is employed as a low-complexity solution for producing soft information, which facilitates the employment of SC at the individual BSs to generate the final soft decision metric. Our simulations and analysis demonstrate that, despite its low additional complexity and backhaul traffic, the proposed distributed PDA-aided SC (DPDA-SC) reception scheme significantly outperforms the conventional noncooperative benchmarkers. Furthermore, since only the index of the possible discrete value of the quantized converged soft information has to be exchanged for SC in practice, the proposed DPDA-SC scheme is relatively robust to the quantization errors of the soft information exchanged. As a beneficial result, the backhaul traffic is dramatically reduced at negligible performance degradation

Experimental analysis of computer system dependability

This paper reviews an area which has evolved over the past 15 years: experimental analysis of computer system dependability. Methodologies and advances are discussed for three basic approaches used in the area: simulated fault injection, physical fault injection, and measurement-based analysis. The three approaches are suited, respectively, to dependability evaluation in the three phases of a system's life: design phase, prototype phase, and operational phase. Before the discussion of these phases, several statistical techniques used in the area are introduced. For each phase, a classification of research methods or study topics is outlined, followed by discussion of these methods or topics as well as representative studies. The statistical techniques introduced include the estimation of parameters and confidence intervals, probability distribution characterization, and several multivariate analysis methods. Importance sampling, a statistical technique used to accelerate Monte Carlo simulation, is also introduced. The discussion of simulated fault injection covers electrical-level, logic-level, and function-level fault injection methods as well as representative simulation environments such as FOCUS and DEPEND. The discussion of physical fault injection covers hardware, software, and radiation fault injection methods as well as several software and hybrid tools including FIAT, FERARI, HYBRID, and FINE. The discussion of measurement-based analysis covers measurement and data processing techniques, basic error characterization, dependency analysis, Markov reward modeling, software-dependability, and fault diagnosis. The discussion involves several important issues studies in the area, including fault models, fast simulation techniques, workload/failure dependency, correlated failures, and software fault tolerance

Evaluation Applied to Reliability Analysis of Reconfigurable, Highly Reliable, Fault-Tolerant, Computing Systems for Avionics

Emulation techniques are proposed as a solution to a difficulty arising in the analysis of the reliability of highly reliable computer systems for future commercial aircraft. The difficulty, viz., the lack of credible precision in reliability estimates obtained by analytical modeling techniques are established. The difficulty is shown to be an unavoidable consequence of: (1) a high reliability requirement so demanding as to make system evaluation by use testing infeasible, (2) a complex system design technique, fault tolerance, (3) system reliability dominated by errors due to flaws in the system definition, and (4) elaborate analytical modeling techniques whose precision outputs are quite sensitive to errors of approximation in their input data. The technique of emulation is described, indicating how its input is a simple description of the logical structure of a system and its output is the consequent behavior. The use of emulation techniques is discussed for pseudo-testing systems to evaluate bounds on the parameter values needed for the analytical techniques

Age-Related Differences in Multimodal Information Processing and Their Implications for Adaptive Display Design.

In many data-rich, safety-critical environments, such as driving and aviation, multimodal displays (i.e., displays that present information in visual, auditory, and tactile form) are employed to support operators in dividing their attention across numerous tasks and sources of information. However, limitations of this approach are not well understood. Specifically, most research on the effectiveness of multimodal interfaces has examined the processing of only two concurrent signals in different modalities, primarily in vision and hearing. Also, nearly all studies to date have involved young participants only. The goals of this dissertation were therefore to (1) determine the extent to which people can notice and process three unrelated concurrent signals in vision, hearing and touch, (2) examine how well aging modulates this ability, and (3) develop countermeasures to overcome observed performance limitations. Adults aged 65+ years were of particular interest because they represent the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, are known to suffer from various declines in sensory abilities, and experience difficulties with divided attention. Response times and incorrect response rates to singles, pairs, and triplets of visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli were significantly higher for older adults, compared to younger participants. In particular, elderly participants often failed to notice the tactile signal when all three cues were combined. They also frequently falsely reported the presence of a visual cue when presented with a combination of auditory and tactile cues. These performance breakdowns were observed both in the absence and presence of a concurrent visual/manual (driving) task. Also, performance on the driving task suffered the most for older adult participants and with the combined visual-auditory-tactile stimulation. Introducing a half-second delay between two stimuli significantly increased response accuracy for older adults. This work adds to the knowledge base in multimodal information processing, the perceptual and attentional abilities and limitations of the elderly, and adaptive display design. From an applied perspective, these results can inform the design of multimodal displays and enable aging drivers to cope with increasingly data-rich in-vehicle technologies. The findings are expected to generalize and thus contribute to improved overall public safety in a wide range of complex environments.PhDIndustrial and Operations EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133203/1/bjpitts_1.pd