On modeling approach for embedded real-time software simulation testing

Modeling technology has been introduced into software testing field. However, how to carry through the testing modeling effectively is still a difficulty. Based on combination of simulation modeling technology and embedded real-time software testing method, the process of simulation testing modeling is studied first. And then, the supporting environment of simulation testing modeling is put forward. Furthermore, an approach of embedded real-time software simulation testing modeling including modeling of cross-linked equipments of system under testing （SUT）, test case, testing scheduling, and testing system service is brought forward. Finally, the formalized description and execution system of testing models are given, with which we can realize real-time, closed loop, mad automated system testing for embedded real-time software.

Real-time embedded software testing method based on extended finite state machine

The reliability of real-time embedded software directly determines the reliability of the whole real-time embedded sys- tem, and the effective software testing is an important way to ensure software quality and reliability. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of real-time embedded software, the formal method is introduced into the real-time embedded software testing field and the real-time extended finite state machine （RT-EFSM） model is studied firstly. Then, the time zone division method of real-time embedded system is presented and the definition and description methods of time-constrained transition equivalence class （timeCTEC） are presented. Furthermore, the approaches of the testing sequence and test case generation are put forward. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a typical avionics real- time embedded software testing practice and the examples of the timeCTEC, testing sequences and test cases are given. With the analysis of the testing result, the application verification shows that the proposed method can effectively describe the real-time embedded software state transition characteristics and real-time requirements and play the advantages of the formal methods in accuracy, effectiveness and the automation supporting. Combined with the testing platform, the real-time, closed loop and automated simulation testing for real-time embedded software can be realized effectively.

A State-of-the-Art Survey on Real-Time Issues in Embedded Systems Virtualization

Virtualization has gained great acceptance in the server and cloud computing arena. In recent years, it has also been widely applied to real-time embedded systems with stringent timing constraints. We present a comprehensive survey on real-time issues in virtualization for embedded systems, covering popular virtualization systems including KVM, Xen, L4 and others.

A Requirements Engineering Environment for Embedded Real-Time Software—SREE

The paper presents the embedded real-time software-oriented requirements engineering environment—SREZ. It involves the whole process of software requirements engineering, including the definition, analysis and checking of requirements ,specifications. We first explain the principles of the executable specification language RTRSM. Subsequently, we introduce the main functions of SREE, illustrate the methods and techniques of checking requirements specifications, especially how to perform simulation execution, combining prototyping method with RTRSM and animated representations. At last, we compare the SREE with other requirements specifications methods and make a summary for SREE＇s advantages.

A Smart Phone-oriented Embedded Real-time Operating System

This article presents an embedded Smart Phone Operating System (SPOS) independently designed by ZTE Corporation. The SPOS is based on single kernel architecture with its multi-task real-time kernel supporting hardware platforms and resources of mainstream mobile phones. It has remarkable advantages such as highly efficient and dynamic power management, priority - based preemptive scheduling, fast startup, a variety of drivers, and excellent system stability and operability. For the development of upper layer communication protocols and application software, the SPOS provides wireless communication interfaces and the application program framework.

Energy-Efficient Deterministic Fault-Tolerant Scheduling for Embedded Real-Time Systems

By combining fault-tolerance with power management, this paper developed a new method for aperiodic task set for the problem of task scheduling and voltage allocation in embedded real-time systems. The scbedulability of the system was analyzed through checkpointing and the energy saving was considered via dynamic voltage and frequency scaling. Simulation results showed that the proposed algorithm had better performance compared with the existing voltage allocation techniques. The proposed technique saves 51.5% energy over FT-Only and 19.9% over FT ＋ EC on average. Therefore, the proposed method was more appropriate for aperiodic tasks in embedded real-time systems.

A Concept of Dynamically Reconfigurable Real-time Vision System for Autonomous Mobile Robotics

This paper describes specific constraints of vision systems that are dedicated to be embedded in mobile robots. If PC-based hardware architecture is convenient in this field because of its versatility, flexibility, performance, and cost, current real-time operating systems are not completely adapted to long processing with varying duration, and it is often necessary to oversize the system to guarantee fail-safe functioning. Also, interactions with other robotic tasks having more priority are difficult to handle. To answer this problem, we have developed a dynamically reconfigurable vision processing system, based on the innovative features of Cleopatre real-time applicative layer concerning scheduling and fault tolerance. This framework allows to define emergency and optional tasks to ensure a minimal quality of service for the other subsystems of the robot, while allowing to adapt dynamically vision processing chain to an exceptional overlasting vision process or processor overload. Thus, it allows a better cohabitation of several subsystems in a single hardware, and to develop less expensive but safe systems, as they will be designed for the regular case and not rare exceptional ones. Finally, it brings a new way to think and develop vision systems, with pairs of complementary operators.

Research and Development of an Embedded Numerical Control System

This paper puts forward a new scheme of Embedded Numerical Control System based on ARM and DSP,which is at the base of research on traditional numerical control system and embedded technology.And the paper also describes the develop- ment of hardware and software platform.All the development and realization are based on the idea of module design.The embed- ded numerical control system,using ARM and DSP to construct the main control platform,realizes the real-time operation of sys- tem and improves the stability and reliability with the modular designing ideas of hardware and software and with the support of embedded real-time operating system(uc/os-Ⅱ).And the system could realize the multi-network supporting,which is also accord with the development of modularization,flexibility and latticing of numerical control system.

Analysis and Comparison of Five Kinds of Typical Device-Level Embedded Operating Systems

Today, the number of embedded system was applied in the field of automation and control has far exceeded a variety of general-purpose computer. Embedded system is gradually penetrated into all fields of human society, and ubiquitous embedded applications constitute the 'ubiquitous' computing era. Embedded operating system is the core of the em-bedded system, and it directly affects the performance of the whole system. Our Liaoning Provincial Key Laboratory of Embedded Technology has successfully developed five kinds of device-level embedded operating systems by more than ten years’ efforts, and these systems are Webit 5.0, Worix, μKernel, iDCX 128 and μc/os-II 128. This paper mainly analyses and compares the implementation mechanism and performance of these five kinds of device-level embedded operating systems in detail.

Partitioned k-Exclusion Real-Time Locking Protocol Motivated by Multicore Multi-GPU Systems

Graphic processing units （GPUs） have been widely recognized as cost-efficient co-processors with acceptable size, weight, and power consumption. However, adopting GPUs in real-time systems is still challenging, due to the lack in framework for real-time analysis. In order to guarantee real-time requirements while maintaining system utilization ~in modern heterogeneous systems, such as multicore multi-GPU systems, a novel suspension-based k-exclusion real-time locking protocol and the associated suspension-aware schedulability analysis are proposed. The proposed protocol provides a synchronization framework that enables multiple GPUs to be efficiently integrated in multicore real-time systems. Comparative evaluations show that the proposed methods improve upon the existing work in terms of schedulability.

Monitor System for Protection Device Based on Embedded RTOS

For the purpose of the monitor system in digital protection, the embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) and the embedded GUI (Graphical User Interface) is introduced to design the monitor system. Combining the necessity and the application value of the operation system, the choice of embedded Linux and Qt/Embedded is completely viable for the monitor system in digital protection for generator-transformer sets. The design with embedded Linux and embedded GUI enriches system information, increases developing efficiency and improve the generality.

A Decision Support Framework for the Choice of Languages and Methods for the Design of Real Time Embedded Systems

The choice of methods or design languages is a crucial phase in the development of systems and software, also for real time and embedded systems. An open question that remains in the design of these types of systems is to build a method, or to choose one among those existing, capable to cover the life cycle of a project, and particularly the development phases. This article contributes to answer the question, by proposing an approach based on a multi-criteria comparative study, of few languages and methods dedicated to the design of real time and embedded systems. The underlying objective of this work is to present to designers a wide range of approaches, and elements that can guide their choices. In order to reach this goal, we propose different comparison criteria. Each criterion is divided into sub-criteria, so that the designers can refine their choices according to the qualities they prefer and wish to have in the method or language. We also define a rating scale which is used to assess the retained languages and methods. The scores obtained from this assessment are presented in tables, one table per criterion, followed by a summary table giving the overall scores. Graphics built from these tables are provided and intend to facilitate the judgement and thus the choice of the designers.

Security-Aware Periodic-Write Scheduling for Mission-Critical Embedded Storage System

High quality of security and guaranteed real-time requirements are two key goals of mission- critical embedded storage systems. But most existing real-time disk scheduling algorithms do not consider improving security performance of disk requests. A security-aware periodic-write （SAPW） scheduling algorithm is proposed to judiciously select appropriate security level for each disk request to maximize security value of N periodic disk users, while without sacrificing timing constraint of each user. Simulation results show the significant effectiveness of SAPW algorithm, and the average security improvement is up to 223.6% over other three algorithms.

基于RPU的TTI程序设计和分析方法

实时嵌入式系统不仅要保证计算结果的逻辑正确性,还要确保与外界交互的时序正确性,所以底层程序要能精确表达上层模型中的时间行为.TTI指令集(time-triggered instruction set)的提出尝试解决计算机指令集体系结构层次缺少时间语义的问题,并且基于TTI指令集实现的实时处理单元(real-time processing unit,RPU)证明了TTI指令集的可行性和有效性.但是目前的工作缺少对于TTI程序设计和分析方法的研究.所以,基于TTI指令集和RPU,提出了TTI指令集可以表达的4种时间语义,给出了TTI程序的设计范式.并且构建了TTI程序时间行为的表示方法——TFG+,TFG+是对TFG的扩展,TFG+区分了TTI程序中时间语义指令和普通代码段,可以表示TTI程序的控制流信息、用户规定的时间行为和TTI程序平台相关的时间属性.最后,提出了TTI程序的时间分析方法以及时间安全性检查方法,为TTI程序的设计和部署提供了依据.

Fault-Tolerant Scheduling for Real-Time Embedded Control Systems

With the increasing complexity of industrial application, an embedded control system (ECS) requires processing a number of hard real-time tasks and needs fault-tolerance to assure high reliability. Considering the characteristics of real-time tasks in ECS, an integrated algorithm is proposed to schedule real-time tasks and to guarantee that all real-time tasks are completed before their deadlines even in the presence of faults. Based on the nonpreemptive critical-section protocol (NCSP), this paper analyzes the blocking time introduced by resource conflicts of relevancy tasks in fault-tolerant multiprocessor systems. An extended schedulability condition is presented to check the assignment feasibility of a given task to a processor. A primary/backup approach and on-line replacement of failed processors are used to tolerate processor failures. The analysis reveals that the integrated algorithm bounds the blocking time, requires limited overhead on the number of processors, and still assures good processor utilization. This is also demonstrated by simulation results. Both analysis and simulation show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in ECS.

Energy Efficient Scheduler of Aperiodic Jobs for Real-time Embedded Systems

Energy consumption has become a key metric for evaluating how good an embedded system is,alongside more performance metrics like respecting operation deadlines and speed of execution.Schedulability improvement is no longer the only metric by which optimality is judged.In fact,energy efficiency is becoming a preferred choice with a fundamental objective to optimize the system's lifetime.In this work,we propose an optimal energy efficient scheduling algorithm for aperiodic real-time jobs to reduce CPU energy consumption.Specifically,we apply the concept of real-time process scheduling to a dynamic voltage and frequency scaling(DVFS)technique.We address a variant of earliest deadline first(EDF)scheduling algorithm called energy saving-dynamic voltage and frequency scaling(ES-DVFS)algorithm that is suited to unpredictable future energy production and irregular job arrivals.We prove that ES-DVFS cannot attain a total value greater than C/ˆSα,whereˆS is the minimum speed of any job and C is the available energy capacity.We also investigate the implications of having in advance,information about the largest job size and the minimum speed used for the competitive factor of ES-DVFS.We show that such advance knowledge makes possible the design of semi-on-line algorithm,ES-DVFS∗∗,that achieved a constant competitive factor of 0.5 which is proved as an optimal competitive factor.The experimental study demonstrates that substantial energy savings and highest percentage of feasible job sets can be obtained through our solution that combines EDF and DVFS optimally under the given aperiodic jobs and energy models.

Current use of intraoperative ultrasound in modern liver surgery

Ultrasound plays an important role not only in preoperative diagnosis but also in intraoperative guidance for liver surgery.Intraoperative ultrasound(IOUS)has become an indispensable tool for modern liver surgeons,especially for minimally invasive surgeries,partially substituting for the surgeon’s hands.In fundamental mode,Doppler mode,contrast enhancement,elastography,and real-time virtual sonography,IOUS can provide additional real-time information regarding the intrahepatic anatomy,tumor site and characteristics,macrovascular invasion,resection margin,transection plane,perfusion and outflow of the remnant liver,and local ablation efficacy for both open and minimally invasive liver resections.Identification and localization of intrahepatic lesions and surrounding structures are crucial for performing liver resection,preserving the adjacent vital vascular and bile ducts,and sparing the functional liver parenchyma.Intraoperative ultrasound can provide critical information for intraoperative decision-making and navigation.Therefore,all liver surgeons must master IOUS techniques,and IOUS should be included in the training of modern liver surgeons.Further investigation of the potential benefits and advances in these techniques will increase the use of IOUS in modern liver surgeries worldwide.This study comprehensively reviews the current use of IOUS in modern liver surgeries.

一种面向实时系统的单循环队列算法的应用

常用的定时器算法在面向实时系统应用中存在着诸多不足,在此分析的基础上,提出了一种实时嵌入式系统中高效定时器算法的实现手段,即通过采用单循环队列算法解决了在多队列计时算法中存在的冗余操作和排序操作的缺点,使得定时器计时方法更有效率,且更具有伸缩性,能适应不同规模的实时嵌入式系统。

一种具有时间语义的实时处理器模型

实时嵌入式系统是安全关键设备的计算与控制核心.为了保证系统的时间行为正确,要求其软硬件具有时序确定性和可预测性.而现代计算机系统的各个抽象层次均缺乏时间语义,无法满足硬实时安全性设计要求.针对指令集体系结构层次的基础设施缺乏时间语义的问题,尝试重新定义实时嵌入式系统的指令集和微体系结构.首先,提出一种具有时间语义的实时计算机体系结构模型——实时机(real-time machine,RTM).接着,参考时间触发自动机理论,构建具有时间语义的指令集——TTI(time-triggered instruction set)作为RTM的软硬件接口,并讨论TTI的时间语义完备性问题.最后,设计并实现了实时处理单元(real-time processing unit,RPU),通过理论分析与实验结果的对照得出RPU的时序确定性.逻辑执行时间(logical execution time,LET)编程模型是学术界广泛认可的实时编程范式,通过给出在RPU上运行LET任务集的示例,说明RTM和TTI的有效性.

Improving the real-time performance of Ethernet for plant automation(EPA) based industrial networks

Real-time Ethernet(RTE) control systems with critical real-time requirements are called fast real-time(FRT) systems.To improve the real-time performance of Ethernet for plant automation(EPA),we propose an EPA-FRT scheme.The minimum macrocycle of EPA networks is reduced by redefining the EPA network frame format,and the synchronization process is modified to acquire higher accuracy.A multi-segmented topology with a scheduling scheme is introduced to increase effective bandwidth utilization and reduce protocol overheads,and thus to shorten the communication cycle significantly.Performance analysis and practical tests on a prototype system show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme,which achieves the best performance at small periodic payload in large scale systems.