The System-Level Simplex Architecture for Improved Real-Time Embedded System Safety

Embedded systems in safety-critical environments demand safety guarantees while providing many useful services that are too complex to formally verify or fully test. Existing application-level fault-tolerance methods, even if formally verified, leave the system vulnerable to errors in the realtime operating system (RTOS), middleware, and microprocessor. We introduce the System-Level Simplex Architecture, which uses hardware/software co-design to provide failoperational guarantees for both logical application-level faults, as well as faults in previously dependent layers including the RTOS and microprocessor. We also provide an end-to-end design process for the System-Level Simplex Architecture where the AADL architecture description is automatically constructed and checked and the VHDL hardware code is generated. To show the efficacy of System-Level Simplex design, we apply the approach to both a classic inverted pendulum and a cardiac pacemaker. We perform fault-injection tests on ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: RTAS
• Authors: Stanley Bak, Deepti K. Chivukula, Olugbemiga Adekunle, Mu Sun, Marco Caccamo, Lui Sha
• Keywords: Logical Application-level Faults, Real-Time Technology, RTAS 2009, Safety Guarantees, System-Level Simplex Architecture