Centralized vs distributed communication scheme on switched ethernet for embedded military applications

Current military communication network is a generation old and is no longer effective in meeting the emerging requirements imposed by the future embedded military applications. Therefore, a new interconnection system is needed to overcome these limitations. Two new communication networks based upon Full Duplex Switched Ethernet are presented herein in this aim. The first one uses a distributed communication scheme where equipments can emit their data simultaneously, which clearly improves system’s throughput and flexibility. However, migrating all existing applications into a compliant form could be an expensive step. To avoid this process, the second proposal consists in keeping the current centralized communication scheme. Our objective is to assess and compare the real time guarantees that each proposal can offer. The paper includes the functional description of each proposed communication network and a military avionic application to highlight proposals ability to support the required time constrained communications

CSP channels for CAN-bus connected embedded control systems

Closed loop control system typically contains multitude of sensors and actuators operated simultaneously. So they are parallel and distributed in its essence. But when mapping this parallelism to software, lot of obstacles concerning multithreading communication and synchronization issues arise. To overcome this problem, the CT kernel/library based on CSP algebra has been developed. This project (TES.5410) is about developing communication extension to the CT library to make it applicable in distributed systems. Since the library is tailored for control systems, properties and requirements of control systems are taken into special consideration. Applicability of existing middleware solutions is examined. A comparison of applicable fieldbus protocols is done in order to determine most suitable ones and CAN fieldbus is chosen to be first fieldbus used. Brief overview of CSP and existing CSP based libraries is given. Middleware architecture is proposed along with few novel ideas

Performance analysis of a Master/Slave switched Ethernet for military embedded applications

Current military communication network is a generation old and is no longer effective in meeting the emerging requirements imposed by the next generation military embedded applications. A new communication network based upon Full Duplex Switched Ethernet is proposed in this paper to overcome these limitations. To allow existing military subsystems to be easily supported by a Switched Ethernet network, our proposal consists in keeping their current centralized communication scheme by using an optimized master/slave transmission control on Switched Ethernet thanks to the Flexible Time Triggered (FTT) paradigm. Our main objective is to assess the performance of such a proposal and estimate the quality of service we can expect in terms of latency. Using the Network Calculus formalism, schedulability analysis are determined. These analysis are illustrated in the case of a realistic military embedded application extracted from a real military aircraft network, to highlight the proposal's ability to support the required time constrained communications

Parametric Schedulability Analysis of Fixed Priority Real-Time Distributed Systems

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.Comment: Submitted to ECRTS 2013 (http://ecrts.eit.uni-kl.de/ecrts13

Predictable migration and communication in the Quest-V multikernal

Quest-V is a system we have been developing from the ground up, with objectives focusing on safety, predictability and efficiency. It is designed to work on emerging multicore processors with hardware virtualization support. Quest-V is implemented as a ``distributed system on a chip'' and comprises multiple sandbox kernels. Sandbox kernels are isolated from one another in separate regions of physical memory, having access to a subset of processing cores and I/O devices. This partitioning prevents system failures in one sandbox affecting the operation of other sandboxes. Shared memory channels managed by system monitors enable inter-sandbox communication. The distributed nature of Quest-V means each sandbox has a separate physical clock, with all event timings being managed by per-core local timers. Each sandbox is responsible for its own scheduling and I/O management, without requiring intervention of a hypervisor. In this paper, we formulate bounds on inter-sandbox communication in the absence of a global scheduler or global system clock. We also describe how address space migration between sandboxes can be guaranteed without violating service constraints. Experimental results on a working system show the conditions under which Quest-V performs real-time communication and migration.National Science Foundation (1117025