基于混合Agent的实时分布监控系统软件设计方法

给出了以审慎Agent和反应Agent模型为基础的混合Agent模型,并对模型的有关概念进行了说明.在混合Agent模型框架下,提出了实时分布系统软件设计方法,主要内容包括采用UML并且充分考虑系统的动态和静态特征的本体设计过程,基于本体的交互协议Petri网形式化描述以及行为规范分类和设计.通过设置反映内存保证混合Agent对事件实时响应,而审慎Agent部分的存在使基于Agent的精神状态和输入事件的推理成为可能.     

Replication Management in Reliable Real-Time Systems

Building reliable real-time applications on top of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components is not a straightforward task. Thus, it is essential to provide a simple and transparent programming model, in order to abstract programmers from the low-level implementation details of distribution and replication. However, the recent trend for incorporating pre-emptive multitasking applications in reliable real-time systems inherently increases its complexity. It is therefore important to provide a transparent programming model, enabling pre-emptive multitasking applications to be implemented without resorting to simultaneously dealing with both system requirements and distribution and replication issues. The distributed embedded architecture using COTS components (DEAR-COTS) architecture has been previously proposed as an architecture to support real-time and reliable distributed computer-controlled systems (DCCS) using COTS components. Within the DEAR-COTS architecture, the hard real-time subsystem provides a framework for the development of reliable real-time applications, which are the core of DCCS applications. This paper presents the proposed framework, and demonstrates how it can be used to support the transparent replication of software components.     

时钟同步算法的分析和比较

在许多分布式实时系统中.,要求整个分布式系统上的各个处理器时钟彼此同步,因而就要采取各种手段进行同步的处理。时钟同步算法保证了空间上分散的处理器时钟彼此同步。该文研究了当今基于软件实现的忍受故障的几种时钟同步算法:确定性、概率型和统计型同步算法并进行特性分析。本文提出了结构化分析的方法,有助于帮助分布式系统的设计者选择最合适的算法结构、系统硬件构成、故障模型、时钟同步质量等。     

Testing real-time systems using genetic algorithms

The development of real-time systems is an essential industrial activity whose importance is increasing. The most important analytical method to assure the quality of real-time systems is dynamic testing. Testing is the only method which examines the actual run-time behaviour of real-time software, based on an execution in the real application environment. Dynamic aspects like the duration of computations, the memory actually needed, or the synchronization of parallel processes are of major importance for the correct function of real-time systems and have to be tested. A comprehensive investigation of existing software test methods shows that they mostly concentrate on testing for functional correctness. They are not suited for an examination of temporal correctness which is essential to real-time systems. Very small systems show a wide range of different execution times. Therefore, existing test procedures must be supplemented by new methods, which concentrate on determining whether the system violates its specified timing constraints. In general, this means that outputs are produced too early or their computation takes too long. The task of the tester is to find the inputs with the longest or shortest execution times to check whether they produce a temporal error. If the search for such inputs is interpreted as a problem of optimization, genetic algorithms can be used to find the inputs with the longest or shortest execution times automatically. The fitness function is the execution time measured in processor cycles. Experiments using genetic algorithms on a number of programs with up to 1511 LOC and 843 integer input parameters have successfully identified new longer and shorter paths than had been found using random testing or systematic testing. Genetic algorithms are able therefore to check large programs and they show considerable promise in establishing the validity of the temporal behaviour of real-time software.     

FASA: A software architecture and runtime framework for flexible distributed automation systems

Modern automation systems have to cope with large amounts of sensor data to be processed, stricter security requirements, heterogeneous hardware, and an increasing need for flexibility. The challenges for tomorrow’s automation systems need software architectures of today’s real-time controllers to evolve.This article presents FASA, a modern software architecture for next-generation automation systems. FASA provides concepts for scalable, flexible, and platform-independent real-time execution frameworks, which also provide advanced features such as software-based fault tolerance and high degrees of isolation and security. We show that FASA caters for robust execution of time-critical applications even in parallel execution environments such as multi-core processors.We present a reference implementation of FASA that controls a magnetic levitation device. This device is sensitive to any disturbance in its real-time control and thus, provides a suitable validation scenario. Our results show that FASA can sustain its advanced features even in high-speed control scenarios at 1 kHz.     

组件思想在模拟执行的需求检查方法中的运用

模拟执行是一种重要的需求规格说明书(SRS)的检测方法。文章基于面向嵌入式实时系统的需求描述模型RTRSM,提出了如何将组件化的思想和技术应用于模拟执行的检查方法中,从而增加了SRS的可靠性和正确性。最后,文章提出了根据需求描述模型直接生成框架代码的构想,这也是一种从需求直接生成嵌入式实时系统的探索。     

ASADAL/SIM: an incremental multi-level simulation and analysis tool for real-time software specifications

Despite considerable advancement in software engineering methods during the past three decades, requirements engineering of large and complex software systems still remains a difficult and active research problem. One such difficulty lies in developing correct and useful methods for the validation and verification of real-time software specifications. One way of analyzing and validating/verifying software specifications is to mathematically derive or prove desired system properties based on formal specification languages. A full scale system analysis using such formal methods is limited in practice because of the required mathematical skills and computational costs. Formal methods are often used to check only a few very critical real-time properties. Simulation is a complementary approach to testing various system characteristics and validating user requirements. It is especially good for providing a rough picture of final system behavior. This paper presents ASADAL/SIM, a tool for multi-level simulation and analysis of real-time software specifications. It is a subsystem of a larger computer-aided real-time software development environment called ASADAL, and complements ASADAL/PROVER, another subsystem of ASADAL which is a formal verification module.^1. With ASADAL/SIM, simulation primitives can be added to evolving specifications in order to assign stochastic behaviors to external entities and internal processes, and to build a simulation model. ASADAL/SIM can execute the model and, at the same time, demonstrate the final system behavior by graphically showing internal workings of the system; catch undesirable system behaviors with breakpoints; and present various analytical results and system statistics ASADAL/SIM, following ASADAL's philosophies of hierarchical system modeling and early system validation, allows users to simulate ‘evolving’ specifications at different, mixed, and wide levels of detail. In particular, algorithmic details may be specified for low level behavioral blocks, and simulated with abstract entities yet to be refined to such a level. This facilitates the tracking of critical data values at the specification level, and eases the next transformation into code level implementation. With ASADAL/SIM, ASADAL becomes an effective and comprehensive supporting tool for various existing software engineering approaches, particularly top-down refinement and incremental development practices. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

实时多任务过程控制机软件设计

本文从实用角度论述了一种可用于分布式系统和用户控制任务相对独立环境的实时多任务过程控制软件的整体设计思想、软件结构和实现的一般方法。文中还分别给出了两级系统监控级和过程控制级软件的实例。     

Security-aware Signal Packing Algorithm for CAN-based Automotive Cyber-physical Systems

Network and software integration pose severe challenges in cyber-security for controller area network (CAN)-based automotive cyber-physical system (ACPS), therefore we employ message authentication code (MAC) to defend CAN against masquerade attack, but the consequent bandwidth overhead makes it a necessity to find the tradeoff among security, real-time and bandwidth utilization for signal packing problem (SPP) of CAN. A mixed-security signal model is firstly proposed to formally describe the properties and requirements on security and real-time for signals, and then a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation of SPP security-aware signal packing (SASP) is implemented to solve the tradeoff problem, where the bandwidth utilization is improved and the requirements in both security and real-time are met. Experiments based on both society of automotive engineers (SAE) standard signal set and simulated signal set showed the effectiveness of SASP by comparing with the state-of-the-art algorithm.      

Design and Verification of Distributed Recovery Blocks with CSP

A case study on the application of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) to the design and verification of fault-tolerant real-time systems is presented. The distributed recovery block (DRB) scheme is a design technique for the uniform treatment of hardware and software faults in real-time systems. Through a simple fault-tolerant real-time system design using the DRB scheme, the case study illustrates a paradigm for specifying fault-tolerant software and demonstrates how the different behavioural aspects of a fault-tolerant real-time system design can be separately and systematically specified, formulated, and verified using an integrated set of formal techniques based on CSP.     

A class of high level languages for process control

An abstract notational system can serve as a model for the investigation of high level programming languages that explicitly support the monitoring and control of parallel events, provide data types at the bit level and allow real-time interaction between user and process. Run-time mechanisms that support the execution of programs in the notational system chosen on specific hardware can also be identified. A software tools environment can be designed to provide high level languages and runtime support for process control in a way that encourages portability among different hardware configurations.     

Identification of a modified Wiener-Hammerstein system and its application in electrically stimulated paralyzed skeletal muscle modeling

Electrical muscle stimulation demonstrates potential for restoring functional movement and preventing muscle atrophy after spinal cord injury (SCI). Control systems used to optimize delivery of electrical stimulation protocols depend upon mathematical models of paralyzed muscle force outputs. While accurate, the Hill-Huxley-type model is very complex, making it difficult to implement for real-time control. As an alternative, we propose a modified Wiener-Hammerstein system to model the paralyzed skeletal muscle dynamics under electrical stimulus conditions. Experimental data from the soleus muscles of individuals with SCI was used to quantify the model performance. It is shown that the proposed Wiener-Hammerstein system is at least comparable to the Hill-Huxley-type model. On the other hand, the proposed system involves a much smaller number of unknown coefficients. This has substantial advantages in identification algorithm analysis and implementation including computational complexity, convergence and also in real-time model implementation for control purposes.     

Automated prototyping tool-kit (APT)

Automated prototyping tool-kit (APT) is an integrated set of software tools that generate source programs directly from real-time requirements. The APT system uses a fifth-generation prototyping language to model the communication structure, timing constraints, I/O control, and data buffering that comprise the requirements for an embedded software system. The language supports the specification of hard real-time systems with reusable components from domain specific component libraries. APT has been used successfully as a research tool in prototyping large war-fighter control systems (e.g. the command-and-control station, cruise missile flight control system, patriot missile defense systems) and demonstrated its capability to support the development of large complex embedded software.     

一种帧间相关的弱硬实时系统的分析与研究

随着嵌入式系统的发展，实时操作系统越来越受到人们的重视，实时操作系统的一个关键问题是实时调度问题，在研究弱硬实时系统的基础上提出了一种受弱硬实时限制的帧间相关周期模型．首先对该模型的调度性进行了分析与研究，得出了一些结论，然后提出了相应的基于双距离的优先级调度算法，该算法充分利用了帧间相关的特点来提高实时任务的可调度性，最后进行了总结与展望．     

A Software-Reuse Approach to Build Monitor Programs for Soft Real-Time Applications

Thispaper describes the implementation of an integration frameworkto build real-time monitor programs based on software reuse.A custom-made real-time monitor program can be built very quicklyby integrating existing monitor programs on commercial operatingsystems, where limited real-time system support is provided.We address issues related to software control, output re-processing,data age, and interactivities of program executions. The feasibilityof this framework is demonstrated by the construction of an integrationenvironment and a monitor program built by the environment forsoft real-time applications in the Microsoft Windows operatingsystems. We also measure the incurred system overheads of thisapproach.     

基于UML的面向方面的实时系统建模方法

利用基于UML的面向方面编程(AOP)技术来建模实时系统,把实时关注从系统中分离出来,形成一个独立于系统的时间方面,实现时间方面的并发设计和系统时间特性的统一管理。AOP技术允许把设计好的时间方面根据需要重新织入系统,组合为实时系统。模型从系统的静态结构模型、动态行为模型和时间方面的织入等几部分来建模实时系统,并扩展了UML来表达AOP技术和时间概念,提高软件的重用性。一个电梯控制系统例子用来说明了这种建模方法。     

实时构件合成的语义研究

实时构件合成是实时应用系统中软件合成的基础,是实现软件复用思想的软件生产活动,其语义研究从实时构件的反射式语义模型、实时构件合成的适配性验证和合成构件的语义规约机制三个方面展开,规约为实时构件合成中的分析理论。     

基于多核处理器系统多维限制的节能实时调度

介绍了多核处理器系统所面对的处理器实际限制、抢占调度实际限制和并行任务模型实际限制等多维限制挑战, 主要针对处理器开销模型、有限抢占模型和复杂并行任务模型等方面, 深入探讨了基于系统实际多维模型的多核节能实时调度研究, 为促进多核处理器系统在实时嵌入式领域的应用提供理论和技术参考.     

一种帧间相关的窗口限制实时系统的分析与研究

在研究窗口限制实时系统的基础上提出了一种受窗口限制的帧间相关周期模型。首先对该模型的调度性进行了分析与研究,得出了一些结论,然后提出了相应的动态双窗口限制调度算法,该算法充分利用了帧间相关的特点来提高实时任务的可调度性,减少窗口限制违例。同时,还进行了大量的模拟研究,这些模拟以传统的动态窗口限制调度算法为基准,将其应用于帧间相关的周期模型时的窗口限制违例情况与新算法进行比较,模拟结果表明,新算法的表现优于传统的动态窗口限制调度算法。     

ARMADA Middleware and Communication Services

Real-time embedded systems have evolved during the past several decades from small custom-designed digital hardware to large distributed processing systems. As these systems become more complex, their interoperability, evolvability and cost-effectiveness requirements motivate the use of commercial-off-the-shelf components. This raises the challenge of constructing dependable and predictable real-time services for application developers on top of the inexpensive hardware and software components which has minimal support for timeliness and dependability guarantees. We are addressing this challenge in the ARMADA project.ARMADA is set of communication and middleware services that provide support for fault-tolerance and end-to-end guarantees for embedded real-time distributed applications. Since real-time performance of such applications depends heavily on the communication subsystem, the first thrust of the project is to develop a predictable communication service and architecture to ensure QoS-sensitive message delivery. Fault-tolerance is of paramount importance to embedded safety-critical systems. In its second thrust, ARMADA aims to offload the complexity of developing fault-tolerant applications from the application programmer by focusing on a collection of modular, composable middleware for fault-tolerant group communication and replication under timing constraints. Finally, we develop tools for testing and validating the behavior of our services. We give an overview of the ARMADA project, describing the architecture and presenting its implementation status.