Looking for motivated students (undergrads and grads) interested in working on embedded software and systems research. Mail Sebastian Fischmeister for further information.
Distributed real-time systems require predictable networks to exchange application data within bounded delays. Switched Ethernet is an attractive networking technology for distributed real-time systems. However, Ethernet devices require special coordination mechanisms to support real-time traffic because of their inherent competitive approach. Embedding coordination units in the network interfaces is a common approach to prevent competition. While hardware scheduling units can operate at line rate with predictable delays at the end-stations, frame processing tasks and buffer management in standard switches introduce high latency and jitter in the path, preventing accurate synchronization between distributed stations.
This project is about:
- Enabling real-time capabilities on top of standard Ethernet
- Deriving efficient application-specific schedules for distributed real-time applications
- Investigating flexibility in the context of safety-critical applications
By intersecting research on formal models and abstractions for dynamic-TDMA arbitration and technological insights of modern reconfigurable architectures, we have developed a comprehensive open-source framework that tackles multiple open challenges in heterogeneous distributed systems, including provision of ultra-low latency and jitter, dynamic bandwidth management, and segmentation of real-time domains within large networks.
The complete framework, including source code for hardware components and software tools, and a detailed description of illustrative examples of the achieved properties in multi-hop Ethernet setting are available on the demonstrator page.
Project members:
Sebastian Fischmeister
Faculty
Akramul Azim
Graduate student
Luis Araneda
Visiting graduate student
Manuel Díaz Cádiz
Visiting graduate student
Last updated: February 29, 2016
Related Publications
, "Generation of Communication Schedules for Multi-Mode Distributed Real-Time Applications", Proceedings of Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE), Grenoble, France, pp. 1--6, March, 2014.
[paper] (1.21 MB)
[paper] (1.21 MB) , "An Open Platform for Mixed-Criticality Real-time Ethernet", Proc. of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE), Grenoble, France, pp. 153-156, 2013.
[paper] (425.47 KB)
[paper] (425.47 KB) , "Atacama: An Open FPGA-based Platform for Mixed-Criticality Communication in Multi-segmented Ethernet Networks", Proc. of the 21st IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), pp. 121--128, April, 2013.
[paper] (1.26 MB)
[paper] (1.26 MB) , "A TDMA Ethernet Switch for Dynamic Real-Time Communication", Proc. of the 18th IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), Charlotte, United States, pp. 119–126, May, 2010.
[paper] (292.42 KB)
[paper] (292.42 KB) , "Specification and Analysis of Network Resource Requirements of Control Systems", Proc. of the 12th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC), Los Angeles, USA CA, pp. 381–395, April, 2009.
[paper] (252.55 KB)
[paper] (252.55 KB) , "A Programmable Arbitration Layer For Adaptive Real-Time Systems", Proc. of the Intl. Workshop on Adaptive and Reconfigurable Embedded Systems (APRES), St. Luis, USA, pp. 27–31, April, 2008.
, "A Dynamic Scheduling Approach to Designing Flexible Safety-Critical Systems", Proc. of the 7th Annual ACM Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT), Salzburg, Austria, pp. 67--74, October, 2007.
[paper] (302.29 KB)
[paper] (302.29 KB) , "Composition Techniques for Tree Communication Schedules", Proc. of the 19th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS), Pisa, Italy, pp. 235–246, July, 2007.
[paper] (698.16 KB)
[paper] (698.16 KB) , "An Analysis Framework for Network-Code Programs", Proc. of the ACM & IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT), Seoul, South Korea, pp. 122–131, October, 2006.
[paper] (494.91 KB)
[paper] (494.91 KB) , "Network-Code Machine: Programmable Real-Time Communication Schedules", Proc. of the IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), San Jose, USA, pp. 311–324, April, 2006.
[paper] (232.2 KB)
[paper] (232.2 KB) , "Distributed Code Generation from Hybrid Systems Models for Time-delayed Multirate Systems", Proc. of the ACM Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT), New York, USA, pp. 210–213, September, 2005.
[paper] (320.51 KB)
[paper] (320.51 KB) , "Integrating Dynamic-TDMA Communication Channels into COTS Ethernet Networks", IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 12, issue 5, pp. 1806-1816, 2016.
, "Evaluation of Communication Architectures for Switched Real-time Ethernet", IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2012.
, "State-based scheduling with tree schedules: analysis and evaluation", Real-Time Systems, vol. 48, issue 4, pp. 430 - 462, 2012.
[paper] (1.24 MB)
[paper] (1.24 MB) , "Generating Reliable Code from Hybrid-Systems Models", IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 59, pp. 1281–1294, July, 2010.
[paper] (1.91 MB)
[paper] (1.91 MB) , "Hardware Acceleration for Conditional State-Based Communication Scheduling on Real-Time Ethernet", IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 5, pp. 325–337, 2009.
[paper] (1.23 MB)
[paper] (1.23 MB) , "Plug-and-Play for Medical Devices: Experiences from a Case Study", Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, vol. 43, 2009.
[paper] (530.32 KB)
[paper] (530.32 KB) , "A Verifiable Language for Programming Real-Time Communication Schedules", IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 56, issue 11, pp. 1505 - 1519, 11/2007.
[paper] (1.39 MB)
[paper] (1.39 MB)