Supporting Early Modeling and End-to-end Timing Analysis of Vehicular Distributed Real-Time Applications

REACTION 2012. 1st International workshop on Real-time and distributed computing in emerging applications. December 4th, 2012, San Juan, Puerto Rico.The current model- and component-based development approaches for automotive distributed real-time systems have non-existing, or limited, support for modeling network traffic originating from outside the vehicle, i.e., vehicle-tovehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and cloud-based applications. We present novel modeling and analysis techniques to allow early end-to-end timing analysis of distributed applications based on their models and simple models of network traffic that originates from outside of the model. As a proof of concept, we implement these techniques in the existing industrial tool suite Rubus- ICE which is used for the development of software for vehicular embedded systems by several international companies. We also conduct an application-case study to validate our techniques.This work is supported by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation (KKS) within the project FEMMVA. We thank the industrial partners Arcticus Systems, BAE Systems Hägglunds and Volvo Construction Equipment (VCE), Sweden

Knowledge, attitudes and practices of parents regarding antibiotic use in children

Background: Emerging resistance to antimicrobial chemotherapy is becoming a challenge for medicine in recent times. Un-prescribed use of antibiotics is a major contributor to development of this problem. In Pakistan access to antibiotics remains unchecked and hence results in it are over use. The aim of this study was to assess knowledge of parents regarding use of antibiotics, its associated problems, their source of information and their expectations from Paediatricians for prescription of anti-biotics.Methods: This is a questionnaire based cross sectional study conducted in Hayatabad town, District Peshawar. Parents who were consenting, had children aged between 0-16 years, and were not related to medical profession were included in study. Total number of participants interviewed was 400. Analysis was done using prevalence ratios.Results: Most of the participants were mothers. Majority of respondents were literate with education up till level of Graduation. 64% mentioned that they enjoyed a good access to healthcare. Most common source for use of antibiotics was Physician. 35% mentioned that antibiotics must be administered in any case of fever, 47% thought antibiotics to increase recovery time and 51% knew that antibiotics have their own side effect. The most common reason to administer un-prescribed antibiotics was same antibiotic being prescribed by a physician earlier followed by family member or pharmacist recommending use of antibiotic. Lack of resources was denied as a reason for self-administration of antibiotics by majority of parents.CONCLUSION: There is a need of intervention to increase awareness regarding judicious use of antibiotics and to check un-prescribed dispensing of antibiotics

AORTA: Advanced Offloading for Real-time Applications

We are currently witnessing the second wave of cloud services that go beyond web storefronts and IT systems, aiming for digitalization of industrial systems. Automation and time-sensitive systems are now taking their first steps toward the cloud. The AORTA project aims to facilitate this transition by providing key technology components needed for real-time services running in the cloud. The ambition is to support a future robotics ecosystem that enables a new level of flexible productivity in industrial production. AORTA will develop technologies that allow offloading of real-time services/functions to the edge and cloud. We will build upon recent advances in 5G, cloud, and networking technologies. The AORTA framework will support a fluid compute model where functionality will be dynamically deployed locally, in the edge, or in the cloud and support integration and real-time performance irrespective of where it executes. Results of the project will be demonstrated in a real-world robotics manufacturing and construction scenarios operating via a 5G network with real-time edge and large-scale cloud service. The AORTA technologies will provide opportunities for automation enterprises and system integrators by adding real-time capabilities needed to evolve beyond the currently closed ecosystem. They will also add value to telecom providers and operators that may host these new automation services in addition to their current portfolio

MoVES: A Model-Driven Methodology for Vehicular Embedded Systems

This paper introduces a novel model-driven methodology for the software development of real-time distributed vehicular embedded systems on single-and multi-core platforms. The proposed methodology discloses the opportunity of improving the cost-efficiency of the development process by providing automated support to identify viable design solutions with respect to selected non-functional requirements. To this end, it leverages the interplay of modeling languages for the vehicular domain whose integration is achieved by a suite of model transformations. An instantiation of the methodology is discussed for timing requirements, which are among the most critical ones for vehicular systems. To support the design of temporally correct systems, cooperation between EAST-ADL and the Rubus component model is opportunely built-up by means of model transformations, enabling timing-aware design and model-based timing analysis of the system. The applicability of the methodology is demonstrated as the proof of concepts on industrial use cases performed in cooperation with our industrial partners

Modeling and Timing Analysis of Industrial Component-Based Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems

The model- and component-based development approach has emerged as an attractive option for the development of Distributed Real-time Embedded (DRE) systems. In this thesis we target several issues such as modeling of legacy communication, extraction of end-to-end timing models and support for holistic response-time analysis of industrial component-based DRE systems. We introduce a new approach for modeling legacy network communication in component-based DRE systems. By introducing special-purpose components to encapsulate and abstract the communication protocols in DRE systems, we allow the use of legacy nodes and legacy protocols in a component- and model-based software engineering environment. The proposed approach also supports the state-of-the-practice development of component-based DRE systems. The Controller Area Network (CAN) is one of the widely used real-time networks in DRE systems especially in automotive domain. We identify that the existing analysis of CAN does not support common message transmission patterns which are implemented by some high-level protocols used in the industry. Consequently, we extend the existing analysis to facilitate the worst-case response-time computation of these transmission patterns. The extended analysis is generally applicable to any high-level protocol for CAN that uses periodic, sporadic, or both periodic and sporadic transmission of messages. Because an end-to-end timing model should be available to perform the holistic response-time analysis, we present a method to extract the end-to-end timing models from component-based DRE systems. In order to show the applicability of our modeling techniques and extended analysis, we provide a proof of concept by extending the existing industrial component model (Rubus Component Model), implementing the holistic response-time analysis along with the extended analysis of CAN in the industrial tool suite (Rubus-ICE), and conducting an automotive case study.EEMDE

EVALUATION OF SOURCE ROUTING FOR MESH TOPOLOGY NETWORK ON CHIP PLATFORMS

Network on Chip is a scalable and flexible communication infrastructure for the design of core based System on Chip. Communication performance of a NoC depends heavily on the routing algorithm. Deterministic and adaptive distributed routing algorithms have been advocated in all the current NoC architectural proposals. In this thesis we make a case for the use of source routing for NoCs, especially for regular topologies like mesh. The advantages of source routing include in-order packet delivery; faster and simpler router design; and possibility of mixing non-minimal paths in a mainly minimal routing. We propose a method to compute paths for various communications in such a way that traffic congestion is avoided while ensuring deadlock free routing. We also propose an efficient scheme to encode the paths. We developed a tool in Matlab that computes paths for source routing for both general and application specific communications. Depending upon the type of traffic, this tool computes paths for source routing by selecting best routing algorithm out of many routing algorithms. The tool uses a constructive path improvement algorithm to compute paths that give more uniform link load distribution. It also generates different types of traffics. We also developed a simulator capable of simulating source routing for mesh topology NoC. The experiments and simulations which we performed were successful and the results show that the advantages of source routing especially lower packet latency more than compensate its disadvantages. The results also demonstrate that source routing can be a good routing candidate for practical core based SoCs design using network on chip communication infrastructure

How to Design Source Routing for Mesh Topology Network on Chip?

This chapter discusses a step-by-step method to design source routing for Network on Chip, especially for platforms with small sizes and regular topologies like mesh. The design steps include routing algorithm selection, path computation, link load analysis, load balancing, path encoding, simulation and performance evaluation

Resilient Conflict-free Replicated Data Types without Atomic Broadcast

In a distributed system, applications can perform both reads and updates without costly synchronous network round-trips by using Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs). Most CRDTs are based on some variant of atomic broadcast, as that enables them to support causal dependencies between updates of multiple objects. However, the overhead of this atomic broadcast is unnecessary in systems handling only independent CRDT objects. We identified a set of use cases for tracking resource usage where there is a need for a replication mechanism with less complexity and network usage as compared to using atomic broadcast. In this paper, we present the design of such a replication protocol that efficiently leverages the commutativity of CRDTs. The proposed protocol CReDiT (CRDT enhanced with intelligence) uses up to four communication steps per update, but these steps can be batched as needed. It uses network resources only when updates need to be communicated. Furthermore, it is less sensit ive to server failures than current state-of-the-art solutions as other nodes can use new values already after the first communication step, instead of after two or more

Demand-Driven Static Backward Slicing for Unstructured Programs

Backward program slicing identifies the program parts that might influence a particular variable at a program point. A program part (e.g., a statement) can be directly influenced by another part due to its data or control dependence on the later. The classical program slicing approaches are designed to find in advance all the data and control dependencies in the program. This design entails a considerable amount of unnecessary computations because not all the dependencies are required for computing the slice. Demand-driven program slicing approaches try to raise the analysis performance by avoiding the unnecessary computations. However, these approaches cannot address unstructured programs in a demand-driven fashion. On the other hand, the existing techniques that compute the control dependencies in unstructured programs are based on fixed-point iterations, which limits their integration to the demand-driven slicing approaches. Program slicing based on Predicate Code Block (PCB) is a new demand-driven slicing approach that can address only structured programs. This paper presents the first demand-driven technique to compute the control dependencies in unstructured programs. In this regard, the technique uses flow information, location-based information and syntactic structure of the source code. Further, the paper shows how the new technique can be integrated to the PCB-based slicing approach to address unstructured programs.TESTOMAT Project - The Next Level of Test Automatio

Response-Time Analysis of Mixed-Type Controller Area Network (CAN) Messages

The existing response-time analysis of Controller Area Network (CAN) can compute the response times of CAN messages that are queued for transmission periodically or sporadically. However, there are a few high level protocols for CAN such as CANopen and Hagglunds Controller Area Network (HCAN) that support the transmission of mixed messages as well. A mixed message can be queued for transmission both periodically and sporadically. Thus, it does not exhibit a periodic activation pattern. The existing analysis of CAN does not support mixed messages. We extend the existing analysis to compute the response times of mixed messages. The extended analysis is generally applicable to any high level protocol for CAN that uses any combination of periodic, event and mixed (periodic/ sporadic) transmission of CAN messages