Evaluation of Communication Induced Checkpointing Approaches for Reconfiguration-Based Fault-Tolerance in Embedded Systems

Reconfiguration-Based Fault-Tolerance is an approach to developing dependable safety-critical embedded applications, where redundant active or standby resources are used to cope with faults through a system reconfiguration at run-time. Compared to traditional hardware and software redundancy, it is a promising technique that may achieve dependability with a significant reduction in cost, size, weight, and power requirements. Reconfiguration necessitates using proper checkpointing protocols to support state reservation to ensure correct task restarts after a system reconfiguration. Communication Induced Checkpointing (CIC) protocols are well developed and understood for large parallel and information systems, but not much has been done for resource limited embedded systems. This paper implements four common CIC protocols in a resource constrained distributed embedded system with a Controller Area Network (CAN) backbone. An example feedback control system implementation is used for a case study. The four implemented protocols are described and performances are contrasted. The paper compares the protocols in terms of network bandwidth consumptions, CPU usages, checkpointing times, and checkpoint sizes in additional to the traditional measures of forced to local checkpoint rations and total number of checkpoints

A Reconfiguration-Based Fault-Tolerant Anti-Lock Brake-by-Wire System

Anti-Lock Braking Systems (ABS) and Brake-by-Wire Systems (BBW) are safety-critical applications by nature. Such systems are required to demonstrate high degrees of dependability. Fault-tolerance is the primary means to achieve dependability at runtime and has been an active research area for decades. Fault-tolerance is usually achieved in traditional embedded computing systems through redundancy and voting methods. In such systems, hardware units, actuators, sensors, and communication networks are replicated where special voters vote against faulty units. In addition to traditional hardware and software redundancy, hybrid and reconfiguration-basedapproachestofault-toleranceareevolving.Inthisarticle, we present a reconfiguration-based fault-tolerant approach to achieve high dependability in ABS BBW braking systems. The proposed architecture makes use of other components of less safety-critical systems to maintain high dependability in the more safety-critical systems. This is achieved by migrating safety-critical software tasks from embedded computerhardwarethatrunsintoamalfunctiontootherembeddedcomputinghardwarerunningless-critical software tasks. Or by using a different configuration in terms of the used speed sensors and type of ABS. The proposed architecture is on average 20% more reliable than conventional ABS architectures assuming equal reliabilities of different components.Journal Articl

Audition ability to enhance reliability of autonomous vehicles: Allowing cars to hear

The reliability of autonomous vehicles can be enhanced by providing the vehicle with more information about the surrounding environment. Autonomous vehicles typically use LiDAR, Radar, and computer vision to substitute for the driver’s vision. By adding auditory perception, an autonomous vehicle will improve its reliability and enable the vehicle to react better to the environment. This paper proposes a novel approach to enhance the reliability of autonomous vehicles. By adding auditory perception, the vehicle will be able to hear and process audio. To illustrate the advantage of auditory capability, we conducted an experiment to collect and process audio signals obtained from a vehicle driving on the road. We showed how an audio signal can be processed to obtain extra information that can alert the vehicle to potential dangers.Conference PaperPublishe

On the development of a model-based embedded systems design laboratory course

In this paper a model-based embedded systems design laboratory course development is presented. The course is an enhancement over an existing embedded systems laboratory course that uses conventional methods along with low-level and high-level programming languages in designing embedded systems. The proposed laboratory course introduces the concepts of model-based design, rapid prototyping, and auto-code generation to junior students of an undergraduate electrical engineering program. The students are exposed to model-based development and design through using MATLAB ® Simulink ® . The graphical environment of Simulink ® allows students to easily design and implement embedded software and generate code without worrying about the details of conventional coding issues. Moreover, MATLAB ® Simulink ® allows easy auto-code generation to be executed on a variety of microcontrollers and FPGAs. The developed lab course and its experiments were implemented for two semesters at least. One of them was during the COVID-19 shutdown and thus the lab was conducted by students at home. The students' feedback is promising and shows that the lab has helped attain more skills needed by the industry in addition to acquiring a new knowledge area that was not covered by the conventional curriculum.Conference Pape

Project-based learning to enhance teaching embedded systems

Exposing engineering students during their education to real-world problems and giving them the chance to apply what they learn in the classroom is a vital element of engineering education. The Embedded Systems course at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) is one of the main courses that bridge the gap between theoretical electrical engineering education and the real-world. This paper presents the experience of applying project-based learning to enhance teaching the Embedded Systems course at PSUT. The feedback from students illustrated the effectiveness of this method in enhancing the understanding and the ability of students in applying embedded systems design concepts to solve real-world engineering problems.Journal ArticleFinal article publishe