Fischmeister, Sebastian
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Publication Network-Code Machine: Programmable Real-Time Communication Schedules(2006-04-01) Fischmeister, Sebastian; Sokolsky, Oleg; Lee, InsupDistributed hard real-time systems require guaranteed communication. One common approach is to restrict network access by enforcing a time-division multiple access (TDMA) schedule.The typical data representation of offline-generated TDMA schedules is table-like structures. This representation, however, does not permit applications with dynamic communication demands, because the table-like structure prevents on-the-fly changes during execution. A common approach for applications with dynamic communication behavior is dynamic TDMA schedules. However, such schedules are hard to verify, because they are usually implemented in a programming language, which does not support verification. Network code is a behavioral model for specifying real-time communication schedules. It allows modeling arbitrary time-triggered communication schedules with on-the-fly choices, and it is also apt for formal verification. In this work, we present network code and show how we can use a model checker to verify safety properties such as collision-free communication, schedulability, and guaranteed message reception. We also discuss its implementation in RTLinux and provide performance measurements.Publication Generating Sound and Resource-Aware Code from Hybrid System Models(2006-03-15) Anand, Madhukar; Kim, Jesung; Fischmeister, Sebastian; Lee, InsupModern real-time embedded systems are complex, distributed, feature-rich applications. Model-based development of real-time embedded systems promises to simplify and accelerate the implementation process. Although there are appropriate models to design such systems and some tools that support automatic code generation from such models, several issues related to ensuring correctness of the implementation with respect to the model remain to be addressed. In this work, we investigate how we can derive sampling rates for distributed real-time systems generated from a hybrid systems model such that there are no switching discrepancies and the resources spent in achieving this are a minimum. Of particular interest are the resulting mode switching semantics and we propose an approach to handle faulty transitions and compute execution rates for minimizing missed transitions. As a guiding example for our approach, we describe a hybrid systems model for vehicle coordination in which one vehicle acts as a leader and a second follows the leader guaranteeing to maintain a safe distance between the two vehicles.Publication An Analysis Framework for Network-Code Programs(2006-07-19) Anand, Madhukar; Fischmeister, Sebastian; Lee, InsupDistributed real-time systems require a predictable and verifiable mechanism to control the communication medium. Current real-time communication protocols are typically independent of the application and have intrinsic limitations that impede customizing or optimizing them for the application. Therefore, either the developer must adapt her application and work around these subtleties or she must limit the capabilities of the application being developed. Network Code, in contrast, is a more expressive and flexible model that specifies real-time communication schedules as programs. By providing a programmable media access layer on the basis of TDMA, Network Code permits creating application-specific protocols that suit the particular needs of the application. However, this gain in flexibility also incurrs additional costs such as increased communication and run-time overhead. Therefore, engineering an application with network code necessitates that these costs are analyzed, quantified, and weighted against the benefits. In this work, we propose a framework to analyze network code programs for commonly used metrics such as overhead, schedulability, and average waiting time. We introduce Timed Tree Communication Schedules, based on timed automata to model such programs and define metrics in the context of deterministic and probabilistic communication schedules. To demonstrate the utility of our framework, we study an inverted pendulum system and show that we can decrease the cumulative numeric error in the model’s implementation through analyzing and improving the schedule based on the presented metrics.Publication A Verifiable Language for Programming Real-Time Communication Schedules(2007-11-01) Fischmeister, Sebastian; Sokolsky, Oleg; Lee, InsupDistributed hard real-time systems require predictable communication at the network level and verifiable communication behavior at the application level. At the network level, communication between nodes must be guaranteed to happen within bounded time and one common approach is to restrict the network access by enforcing a time-division multiple access (TDMA) schedule. At the application level, the application's communication behavior should be verified to ensure that the application uses the predictable communication in the intended way. Network Code is a domain-specific programming language to write a predictable verifiable distributed communication for distributed real-time applications. In this paper, we present the syntax and semantics of Network Code, how we can implement different scheduling policies, and how we can use tools such as model checking to formally verify the properties of Network Code programs. We also present an implementation of a runtime system for executing Network Code on top of RTLinux and measure the overhead incurred from the runtime system.Publication A Dynamic Scheduling Approach to Designing Flexible Safety-Critical Systems(2007-10-01) Anand, Madhukar; Fischmeister, Sebastian; Almeida, Luis; Lee, InsupThe design of safety-critical systems has typically adopted static techniques to simplify error detection and fault tolerance. However, economic pressure to reduce costs is exposing the limitations of those techniques in terms of efficiency in the use of system resources. In some industrial domains, such as the automotive, this pressure is too high, and other approaches to safety must be found, e.g., capable of providing some kind of fault tolerance but with graceful degradation to lower costs, or also capable of adapting to instantaneous requirements to better use the computational/communication resources. This paper analyzes the development of systems that exhibit such level of flexibility, allowing the system configuration to evolve within a well-defined space. Two options are possible, one starting from the typical static approach but introducing choice points that are evaluated only at runtime, and another one starting from an open systems approach but delimiting the space of possible adaptations. The paper follows the latter and presents a specific contribution, namely, the concept of local utilization bound, which supports a fast and efficient schedulability analysis for on-line resource management that assures continued safe operation. Such local bound is derived off-line for the specific set of possible configurations, and can be significantly higher than any generic non-necessary utilization bound such as the well known Liu and Layland’s bound for Rate-Monotonic scheduling.Publication Composition Techniques for Tree Communication Schedules(2007-07-01) Anand, Madhukar; Fischmeister, Sebastian; Lee, InsupA critical resource in a distributed real-time system is its shared communication medium. Unrestrained concurrent access to the network can lead to collisions that reduce the system's reliability. Therefore in this area, one goal is to develop effective models for coordinating and controlling access to the shared medium and its channels. Network Code is a verifiable, executable model for coordinating and controlling access to a shared communication medium in a distributed real-time system. In this paper, we investigate the problem of building an application by composing multiple Network Code programs. To reason about the composition, we model Network Code programs as Tree Schedules (TS) and then consider the composition of schedules that describe how the network is accessed by different applications. Specifically, we first define the notions of compatibility and composability of tree schedules, and then provide algorithms for their composition and reason about overhead of composition. We illustrate the techniques by considering the composition of two control applications.