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

Scheduling and Fluid Routing for Flow-Based Microfluidic Laboratories-on-a-Chip

Microfluidic laboratories-on-a-chip (LoCs) are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers and are able to integrate the necessary functions for biochemical analysis on-chip. There are several types of LoCs, each having its advantages and limitations. In this paper we are interested in flow-based LoCs, in which a continuous flow of liquid is manipulated using integrated microvalves. By combining several microvalves, more complex units, such as micropumps, switches, mixers, and multiplexers, can be built. We consider that the architecture of the LoC is given, and we are interested in synthesizing an implementation, consisting of the binding of operations in the application to the functional units of the architecture, the scheduling of operations and the routing and scheduling of the fluid flows, such that the application completion time is minimized. To solve this problem, we propose a list scheduling-based application mapping (LSAM) framework and evaluate it by using real-life as well as synthetic benchmarks. When biochemical applications contain fluids that may adsorb on the substrate on which they are transported, the solution is to use rinsing operations for contamination avoidance. Hence, we also propose a rinsing heuristic, which has been integrated in the LSAM framework

The Effect of Consolidation of Municipalities on the Description of a Local history : Kodera-cho as an Example (<Special Issue I>The Renaissance of the Regional Community and Its Historical Culture)

Microfluidic biochips are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers and are able to integrate the necessary functions for biochemical analysis on-chip. In this paper we are interested in flow-based biochips, in which the fluidic flow manipulated using integrated microvalves, which are controlled from external pressure sources, connected to “control pins”. By combining several microvalves, more complex units, such as micropumps, switches, mixers, and multiplexers, can be built. The current practice is to design these biochips by hand in drawing tools such as AutoCAD, and to program them manually by individually controlling each valve. Recent research has proposed top-down physical synthesis Computer-Aided Design tools, and programming languages and compilation techniques to automatically derive the control signals for the valve actuations. However, researchers have so far assumed that the number of ports used to drive the valves (control pins) is unlimited, which has resulted in very expensive, bulky and energy consuming off-chip con-trol and infeasible control routes in the biochip control layer. In this paper, we propose a methodology to reduce the number of control pins required to run a biochemical application. We focus on the compilation task, where the strategy is to delay operations, without missing their dead-lines, such that the sharing of control signals is maximized. The evaluation shows a significant reduction in the number of control pins required

Enabling Fog Computing for Industrial Automation Through Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN)

IEEE Communications Standards Magazin