A Time-Triggered Constraint-Based Calculus for Avionic Systems

The Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architec- ture and the Time-Triggered Ethernet (TTEthernet) network have emerged as the key components of a typical architecture model for recent civil aircrafts. We propose a real-time constraint-based calculus targeted at the analysis of such concepts of avionic embedded systems. We show our framework at work on the modelisation of both the (IMA) architecture and the TTEthernet network, illustrating their behavior by the well-known Flight Management System (FMS)

Scheduling Rate Constrained traffic in End Systems of Time-Aware Networks

Nowadays, most of cyber-physical systems in avionics, automotive or recent Industry 4.0 domains require networked communication for mixed-critical applications. Ethernet-based networks such as AFDX, TTEthernet or TSN are capable to support transmission of both safety-critical and non-critical flows. This paper focuses on the TTEthernet network compliant with the avionics ARINC 664-P7 standard supporting time-triggered communication (TT) together with rate-constrained (RC) and best-effort (BE) traffic. Due to a global synchronization, TTcommunication with low latency and minimal jitter is ensured with static schedules computed offline. For event-triggered RC flows, bounded jitter at the source and end-to-end latency are guaranteed with worst-case analysis methods. With the increasing demands of applications, flows with Quality of Service (QoS) requirements such as video or audio may be transmitted as BE flows. However, on current configurations, no guarantees are offered to BE flows. In this paper, we aim at increasing the maximum RC utilization and improving the QoS of BE flows to allow the transmission of video or audio traffic with low jitter and end-to-end delay requirements. For this, we focus on the scheduling mechanisms and propose a scheduling approach based on a static slotted table that is applied at end systems. This table integrates the TT schedules usually obtained with Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) approaches and establishes offsets of RC flows that reduce the end-to-end delay of BE flows. Several strategies for offset computations are proposed based on the distribution of flows locally at end system or globally at switch. We show that local strategies perform better than the global ones to reduce end-to-end delay of BE flows

Design Optimization of Cyber-Physical Distributed Systems using IEEE Time-sensitive Networks (TSN)

In this paper we are interested in safety-critical real-time applications implemented on distributed architectures supporting the Time-SensitiveNetworking (TSN) standard. The ongoing standardization of TSN is an IEEE effort to bring deterministic real-time capabilities into the IEEE 802.1 Ethernet standard supporting safety-critical systems and guaranteed Quality-of-Service. TSN will support Time-Triggered (TT) communication based on schedule tables, Audio-Video-Bridging (AVB) flows with bounded end-to-end latency as well as Best-Effort messages. We first present a survey of research related to the optimization of distributed cyber-physical systems using real-time Ethernet for communication. Then, we formulate two novel optimization problems related to the scheduling and routing of TT and AVB traffic in TSN. Thus, we consider that we know the topology of the network as well as the set of TT and AVB flows. We are interested to determine the routing of both TT and AVB flows as well as the scheduling of the TT flows such that all frames are schedulable and the AVB worst-case end-to-end delay is minimized. We have proposed an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation for the scheduling problem and a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP)-based heuristic for the routing problem. The proposed approaches have been evaluated using several test cases

Impact of AS6802 Synchronization Protocol on Time-Triggered and Rate-Constrained Traffic

TTEthernet is an Ethernet-based synchronized network technology compliant with the AFDX standard. It supports safety-critical applications by defining different traffic classes: Time-Triggered (TT), Rate-Constrained (RC), and Best-Effort traffic. The synchronization is managed through the AS6802 protocol, which defines so-called Protocol Control Frames (PCFs) to synchronize the local clock of each device. In this paper, we analyze the synchronization protocol to assess the impact of the PCFs on TT and RC traffic. We propose a method to decrease the impact of PCFs on TT and a new Network Calculus model to compute RC delay bounds with the influence of both PCF and TT traffic. We finish with a performance evaluation to i) assess the impact of PCFs, ii) show the benefits of our method in terms of reducing the impact of PCFs on TT traffic and iii) prove the necessity of taking the PCF traffic into account to compute correct RC worst-case delays and provide a safe system

Intégration itérative des systèmes avioniques communicants en mode synchrone et asynchrone

Les systèmes avioniques modernes sont des systèmes distribués complexes et évolutifs. Ces systèmes sont conçus d’une manière itérative en intégrant à chaque itération une ou plusieurs fonctionnalités. L’ajout de nouvelles fonctionnalités impose des coûts supplémentaires de reconfiguration de telle sorte que l’ensemble du système soit conforme aux exigences temps-réel. Ces systèmes reposent également sur l’adoption d’un protocole de communication déterministe tel que le protocole AFDX. Ce dernier est utilisé dans les avions modernes tels que l’A380 de Airbus et le B787 de Boeing. Il repose sur une communication asynchrone avec limitation de la bande passante. Ce mécanisme permet d’assurer des délais finis de communication. La recherche de plus de déterminisme a poussé la communauté scientifique à chercher d’autres alternatives à AFDX. Le standard Time-triggered Ethernet constitue une bonne alternative. En plus de la communication asynchrone à bande passante limitée, il définit également une communication synchrone. Suivant le type de communication, les approches de vérification des exigences temps-réel diffèrent. Pour analyser les flux asynchrones, on utilise principalement des approches analytiques. Elles assurent un bon compromis entre performance et pessimisme. Pour les flux synchrones, on s’appuie plutôt sur le formalisme de contraintes pour synthétiser un ordonnancement faisable. La combinaison des deux flux constitue un défi en termes de vérification. De plus, les approches de vérification définies ne modélisent ni l’aspect évolutif ni la notion coût.----------ABSTRACT: Modern avionics systems are complex and evolving distributed ones. They are designed iteratively by integrating at each iteration one or more functionalities. Adding new functionality may impose additional reconfiguration costs so that the whole system complies with the realtime requirements. These systems also rely on the adoption of a deterministic communication protocol such as AFDX. The latter is used in modern aircrafts such as the Airbus A380 and the Boeing B787. It relies on asynchronous communication with bandwidth limitations. This mechanism ensures finite communication delays. The search for more determinism encourage the scientific community to look for other alternatives to AFDX. The Time-triggered Ethernet standard is a good alternative. In addition to asynchronous communication with limited bandwidth, it also defines synchronous ones. Depending on the type of communication, verification approaches of real-time requirements differ. To analyze asynchronous flows, we mainly use analytical approaches. They ensure a good compromise between performance and pessimism. For synchronous flows, we rely instead on constraint formalism to synthesize a feasible scheduling. The combination of the two flows is a challenge in terms of verification. In addition, defined verification approaches do not model neither the evolving aspect nor the cost concept