Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T18:51:11.631Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reliable flight control system architecture for agile airborne platforms: an asymmetric multiprocessing approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2019

Shibarchi Majumder Open the ORCID record for Shibarchi Majumder [Opens in a new window] ,
Jens Frederik Dalsgaard Nielsen Open the ORCID record for Jens Frederik Dalsgaard Nielsen [Opens in a new window] ,
Thomas Bak Open the ORCID record for Thomas Bak [Opens in a new window]  and
Anders la Cour-Harbo Open the ORCID record for Anders la Cour-Harbo [Opens in a new window]
Shibarchi Majumder*
Affiliation:
Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Jens Frederik Dalsgaard Nielsen*
Affiliation:
Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Thomas Bak*
Affiliation:
Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Anders la Cour-Harbo*
Affiliation:
Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

System software subsystems in an unmanned aircraft system share hardware resources due to space, weight, and power constraints. Such subsystems have different criticality, requirements, and failure rates, and can cause undesired interference when sharing the same hardware. A component with high failure rate can reduce the reliability of the system unless a fault containment mechanism is adopted.

This work proposes an asymmetric multiprocessor architecture to establish isolation at the hardware level for distributed implementation of safety-critical subsystems along with user defined payload subsystems on the same hardware with minimally reduced reliability of the system. To achieve that, subsystems are strategically segregated in separate processors, connected to an on-chip protective interconnect for inter-processor communications. A custom watchdog and reset mechanism are implemented to reset a specific processor without affecting the entire system if required. The architecture is demonstrated on a FPGA chip. In addition, an example of an optimised distribution is provided for a specific flight control system with five subsystems.

Keywords

Mixed-criticality systemreliable-multiprocessingembedded flight computerasymmetric-multiprocessingreliable embedded systemunmanned aircraft system
Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 123 , Issue 1264 , June 2019 , pp. 840 - 862
Copyright
© Royal Aeronautical Society 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research is funded by Danish Independent Research Foundation under grant number 6111-00363B.

References

REFERENCES

Mueller, M.W. and D’andrea, R. Stability and control of a quadrocopter despite the complete loss of one, two, or three propellers, 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2014, doi: 10.1109/ICRA.2014.6906588, ISSN 1050-4729, pp 45–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulbrich, P., Hoffmann, M., Kapitza, R., Lohmann, D., Preikschat, W. and Schmid, R. Eliminating single points of failure in software-based redundancy, Proceedings - 9th European Dependable Computing Conference, EDCC 2012, 2012, doi: 10.1109/EDCC.2012.21, ISSN 1050-4729, pp 45–52.Google Scholar
Gizopoulos, D., Psarakis, M., Adve, S., Ramchandran, P., Hari, S.K., Sorin, D., Meixner, A., Biswas, A. and Vera, X. Architectures for online error detection and recovery in multicore processors, Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition, 2011, doi: 10.1109/DATE.2011.5763096, ISBN 978-3-9810801-7-9.Google Scholar
Bolchini, C., Miele, A. and Sciuto, D. An adaptive approach for online fault management in many-core architectures, 2012 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition, 2012, doi: 10.1109/DATE.2012.6176589, ISBN 978-1-4577-2145-8, pp 1429–1432.Google Scholar
Aggarwal, N., Ranganathan, P., Jouppi, N. and Smith, J. E. Configurable isolation: building high availability systems with commodity multi-core processors, Proceedings of the 34th annual international symposium on Computer architecture, 2007, doi: 10.1145/1273440.1250720, ISBN 978-1-59593-706-3, pp 470–481.Google Scholar
Döbel, B., Härtig, H. and Engel, M. Operating system support for redundant multi-threading, Proceedings of the tenth ACM international conference on Embedded software - EMSOFT’12, 2012, doi: 2380356.2380375, ISBN 9789066052079, pp 83–92.Google Scholar
Lo, M., Valot, N., Maraninchi, F., and Raymond, P. Implementing a real-time avionic application on a many-core processor. 42nd European Rotorcraft Forum (ERF), Sep 2016, Lille, France. (hal-01718139)Google Scholar
Henkel, J., Bauer, L., Dutt, N., Gupta, P., Sahi, N., Muhammad, S., Mehdi, T. and Wenn, N. Reliable on-chip systems in the nano-era, Proceedings of the 50th Annual Design Automation Conference on - DAC ’13, 2013, doi: 2463209.2488857, ISBN 9781450320719, pp 1.Google Scholar
Alhakeem, M.S. and Munk, P.A. Framework for Adaptive Software-Based Reliability in COTS Many-Core Processors, ARCS 2015 - The 28th International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems. Proceedings, 2015, ISBN 9783800736577, pp 1–4.Google Scholar
Huang, L. and XU, Q. Characterizing the lifetime reliability of manycore processors with core-level redundancy, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, Digest of Technical Papers, ICCAD, 2010, doi: 10.1109/ICCAD.2010.5654250, ISBN 9781424481927, pp 680–685.Google Scholar
Finkelstein, M. Failure Rate Modelling for Reliability and Risk chapter 9, 2008, Springer London.Google Scholar
Song, K., Chang, I. and Hoang, P. A Software Reliability Model with a Weibull Fault Detection Rate Function Subject to Operating Environments, ARCS 2015 - The 28th International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems. Proceedings, 2017, doi: 10.3390/app7100983, Publisher: Springer London, pp 983.Google Scholar
Zhang, X. and Pham, H. Software field failure rate prediction before software deployment, Journal of Systems and Software, 2006, doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2005.05.015, ISSN 01641212, pp 291–300.Google Scholar
Littlewood, B. and Strigini, L. Software reliability and dependability, Proceedings of the conference on The future of Software engineering - ICSE ’00, 2000, doi: 10.1145/336512.336551, ISBN 1581132530, pp 175–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’regan, Reliability, G. Software and Dependability, Software failures, 2017, doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-64021-1-2, ISSN 01641212, pp 983.Google Scholar