Mangharam, Rahul
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Introduction
Rahul's focus is on the development of life-critical and safety-critical real-time embedded systems in medical devices, automotive electronics, wireless control networks and energy-efficient buildings. He directs mLAB::Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab, which develops software verification and testing techniques for high-confidence medical devices such as implantable cardiac pacemakers; new designs for automotive electronic controllers to develop programmable vehicles of the future; distributed wireless control networks for closed-loop industrial automation, and new scheduling/control algorithms for energy-efficient buildings.
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Now showing 1 - 10 of 115
Publication Topological conditions for in-network stabilization of dynamical systems(2013-04-01) Pajic, Miroslav; Sundaram, Shreyas; Mangharam, Rahul; Pappas, George; Pajic, Miroslav; Sundaram, Shreyas; Mangharam, Rahul; Pappas, GeorgeWe study the problem of stabilizing a linear system over a wireless network using a simple in-network computation method. Specifically, we study an architecture called the "Wireless Control Network'' (WCN), where each wireless node maintains a state, and periodically updates it as a linear combination of neighboring plant outputs and node states. This architecture has previously been shown to have low computational overhead and beneficial scheduling and compositionality properties. In this paper we characterize fundamental topological conditions to allow stabilization using such a scheme. To achieve this, we exploit the fact that the WCN scheme causes the network to act as a linear dynamical system, and analyze the coupling between the plant's dynamics and the dynamics of the network. We show that stabilizing control inputs can be computed in-network if the vertex connectivity of the network is larger than the geometric multiplicity of any unstable eigenvalue of the plant. This condition is analogous to the typical min-cut condition required in classical information dissemination problems. Furthermore, we specify equivalent topological conditions for stabilization over a wired (or point-to-point) network that employs network coding in a traditional way -- as a communication mechanism between the plant's sensors and decentralized controllers at the actuators.Publication Technical Report: Abstraction-Tree For Closed-loop Model Checking of Medical Devices(2015-05-06) Jiang, Zhihao; Abbas, Houssam; Mosterman, Pieter J; Mangharam, Rahul; Jiang, Zhihao; Abbas, Houssam; Mosterman, Pieter J; Mangharam, RahulPublication Event-based Green Scheduling of Radiant Systems in Buildings(2013-03-01) Nghiem, Truong X; Pappas, George; Mangharam, Rahul; Nghiem, Truong X; Pappas, George; Mangharam, RahulThis paper looks at the problem of peak power demand reduction for intermittent operation of radiant systems in buildings. Uncoordinated operation of the circulation pumps of a multi-zone hydronic radiant system can cause temporally correlated electricity demand surges when multiple pumps are activated simultaneously. Under a demand-based electricity pricing policy, this uncoordinated behavior can result in high electricity costs and expensive system operation. We have previously presented Green Scheduling with the periodic scheduling approach for reducing the peak power demand of electric radiant heating systems while maintaining indoor thermal comfort. This paper develops an event-based state feedback scheduling strategy that, unlike periodic scheduling, directly takes into account the disturbances and is thus more suitable for building systems. The effectiveness of the new strategy is demonstrated through simulation in MATLAB.Publication Scalable Scheduling of Building Control Systems for Peak Demand Reduction(2012-06-15) Nghiem, Truong; Behl, Madhur; Mangharam, Rahul; Pappas, George; Nghiem, Truong; Behl, Madhur; Mangharam, Rahul; Pappas, GeorgeIn large energy systems, peak demand might cause severe issues such as service disruption and high cost of energy production and distribution. Under the widely adopted peak-demand pricing policy, electricity customers are charged a very high price for their maximum demand to discourage their energy usage in peak load conditions. In buildings, peak demand is often the result of temporally correlated energy demand surges caused by uncoordinated operation of sub-systems such as heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC&R) systems and lighting systems. We have previously presented green scheduling as an approach to schedule the building control systems within a constrained peak demand envelope while ensuring that custom climate conditions are facilitated. This paper provides a sufficient schedulability condition for the peak constraint to be realizable for a large and practical class of system dynamics that can capture certain nonlinear dynamics, inter-dependencies, and constrained disturbances. We also present a method for synthesizing periodic schedules for the system. The proposed method is demonstrated in a simulation example to be scalable and effective for a large-scale system.Publication Towards Synthesis of Platform-Aware Attack-Resilient Control Systems: Extended Abstract(2013-04-09) Pajic, Miroslav; Bezzo, Nicola; Weimer, James; Alur, Rajeev; Mangharam, Rahul; Michael, Nathan; Pappas, George J; Sokolsky, Oleg; Tabuada, Paulo; Weirich, Stephanie; Lee, Insup; Pajic, Miroslav; Bezzo, Nicola; Weimer, James; Alur, Rajeev; Mangharam, Rahul; Michael, Nathan; Pappas, George J; Sokolsky, Oleg; Tabuada, Paulo; Weirich, Stephanie; Lee, InsupPublication Real-time Heart Model for Implantable Cardiac Device Validation and Verification(2010-01-20) Jiang, Zhihao; Pajic, Miroslav; Connolly, Allison T; Dixit, Sanjay; Mangharam, Rahul; Jiang, Zhihao; Pajic, Miroslav; Connolly, Allison T; Dixit, Sanjay; Mangharam, RahulDesigning bug-free medical device software is dif- ficult, especially in complex implantable devices that may be used in unanticipated contexts. Safety recalls of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators due to firmware problems between 1990 and 2000 affected over 200,000 devices, comprising 41% of the devices recalled and are increasing in frequency. There is currently no formal methodology or open experimental platform to validate and verify the correct operation of medical device software. To this effect, a real-time Virtual Heart Model (VHM) has been developed to model the electrophysiological operation of the functioning (i.e. during normal sinus rhythm) and malfunctioning (i.e. during arrhythmia) heart. We present a methodology to extract timing properties of the heart to construct a timed-automata model. The platform exposes functional and formal interfaces for validation and verification of implantable cardiac devices. We demonstrate the VHM is capable of generating clinically-relevant response to intrinsic (i.e. premature stimuli) and external (i.e. artificial pacemaker) signals for a variety of common arrhythmias. By connecting the VHM with a pacemaker model, we are able to pace and synchronize the heart during the onset of irregular heart rhythms. The VHM has also been implemented on a hardware platform for closed-loop experimentation with existing and virtual medical devices. The VHM allows for exploratory electrophysiology studies for physicians to evaluate their diagnosis and determine the appropriate device therapy. This integrated functional and formal device design approach will potentially help expedite medical device certification for safer operation.Publication Model-Based Closed-Loop Testing of Implantable Pacemakers(2011-03-01) Jiang, Zhihao; Pajic, Miroslav; Mangharam, Rahul; Jiang, Zhihao; Pajic, Miroslav; Mangharam, RahulThe increasing complexity of software in implantable medical devices such as cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators accounts for over 40% of device recalls. Testing remains the principal means of verification in the medical device certification regime. Traditional software test generation techniques, where the tests are generated independently of the operational environment, are not effective as the device must be tested within the context of the patient's condition and the current state of the heart. It is necessary for the testing system to observe the system state and conditionally generate the next input to advance the purpose of the test. To this effect, a set of general and patient condition-specific temporal requirements is specified for the closed-loop heart and pacemaker system. Based on these requirements, we describe a closed-loop testing environment between a timed automata-based heart model and a pacemaker. This allows for interactive and physiologically relevant model-based test generation for basic pacemaker device operations such as maintaining the heart rate and atrial-ventricle synchrony. We also demonstrate the flexibility and efficacy of the testing environment for more complex common timing anomalies such as reentry circuits, pacemaker mode switch operation and pacemaker-mediated tachycardia. This system is a step toward a testing approach for medical cyber-physical systems with the patient-in-the-loop.Publication Optimizing Transmission and Shutdown for Energy-Efficient Real-Time Packet Scheduling in Clustered Ad Hoc Networks(2005-01-01) Pollin, Sofie; Mangharam, Rahul; Mangharam, Rahul; Catthoor, Francky; Moerman, Ingrid; Rajkumar, Ragunathan; Van der Perre, LiesbetEnergy efficiency is imperative to enable the deployment of ad hoc networks. Conventional power management focuses independently on the physical orMAC layer and approaches differ depending on the abstraction level. At the physical layer, the fundamental tradeoff between transmission rate and energy is exploited, which leads to transmit as slow as possible. At MAC level, power reduction techniques aim to transmit as fast as possible to maximize the radios power-off interval. The two approaches seem conflicting and it is not obvious which one is the most appropriate.We propose a transmission strategy that optimally mixes both techniques in a multiuser context.We present a cross-layer solution considering the transceiver power characteristics, the varying system load, and the dynamic channel constraints. Based on this, we derive a low-complexity online scheduling algorithm. Results considering an M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation radio show that for a range of scenarios a large power reduction is achieved, compared to the case where only scaling or shutdown is considered.Publication The Wireless Control Network: Monitoring for Malicious Behavior(2010-12-15) Sundaram, Shreyas; Pajic, Miroslav; Hadjicostis, Christoforos N; Mangharam, Rahul; Pappas, George J; Sundaram, Shreyas; Pajic, Miroslav; Hadjicostis, Christoforos N; Mangharam, Rahul; Pappas, George JWe consider the problem of stabilizing a plant with a network of resource constrained wireless nodes. In a companion paper, we developed a protocol where each node repeatedly transmits a linear combination of the values in its neighborhood. For certain topologies, we showed that these linear combinations can be designed so that the closed loop system is stable (i.e., the wireless network itself acts as a controller for the plant). In this paper, we design a Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for this control scheme, which observes the transmissions of certain nodes in the network and uses that information to (a) recover the plant outputs (for data-logging and diagnostic purposes) and (b) identify malicious behavior by any of the wireless nodes in the network. We show that if the connectivity of the network is sufficiently high, the IDS only needs to observe a subset of the nodes in the network in order to achieve this objective. Our approach provides a characterization of the set of nodes that should be observed, a systematic procedure for the IDS to use to identify the malicious nodes and recover the outputs of the plant, and an upper bound on the delay required to obtain the necessary information.Publication Computer Aided Clinical Trials for Implantable Cardiac Devices(2018-07-12) Jang, Kuk Jin; Weimer, James; Abbas, Houssam; Jiang, Zhihao; Liang, Jackson; Dixit, Sanjay; Mangharam, Rahul; Jang, Kuk Jin; Weimer, James; Abbas, Houssam; Jiang, Zhihao; Liang, Jackson; Dixit, Sanjay; Mangharam, RahulIn this paper we aim to answer the question, ``How can modeling and simulation of physiological systems be used to evaluate life-critical implantable medical devices?'' Clinical trials for medical devices are becoming increasingly inefficient as they take several years to conduct, at very high cost and suffer from high rates of failure. For example, the Rhythm ID Goes Head-to-head Trial (RIGHT) sought to evaluate the performance of two arrhythmia discriminator algorithms for implantable cardioverter defibrillators, Vitality 2 vs. Medtronic, in terms of time-to-first inappropriate therapy, but concluded with results contrary to the initial hypothesis - after 5 years, 2,000+ patients and at considerable ethical and monetary cost. In this paper, we describe the design and performance of a computer-aided clinical trial (CACT) for Implantable Cardiac Devices where previous trial information, real patient data and closed-loop device models are effectively used to evaluate the trial with high confidence. We formulate the CACT in the context of RIGHT using a Bayesian statistical framework. We define a hierarchical model of the virtual cohort generated from a physiological model which captures the uncertainty in the parameters and allows for the systematic incorporation of information available at the design of the trial. With this formulation, the CACT estimates the inappropriate therapy rate of Vitality 2 compared to Medtronic as 33.22% vs 15.62% (p