DARIO: Distributed Agency for Reliable Input/Output

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http://dario.di.fc.ul.pt/

• Research Line(s): Timeliness and Adaptation in Dependable Systems (TADS)
• Sponsor: FCT
• Project Number: POSC/EIA/56041/2004
• Total award amount: Expression error: Unrecognised word "keuro"warning.png"KEuro" is not declared as a valid unit of measurement for this property. Euros
• Coordinator: FCUL
• Partners: FCUL, IST
• Start Date: Mar. 2005
• Duration: 36 months
• Keywords: Distributed embedded systems, distributed control, real-time sensor/actuator networks, CAN (Controller Area Network) fieldbus
• Team at FCUL: Researchers including

Embedded and distributed computer systems play nowadays a vital role in control applications as diverse as industrial processes, automotive, railways, avionics and aerospace, medical, etc. In this context, the relevance of standard communication networks such as fieldbus cannot be ignored.

In the scope of the DARIO project, we plan to use the Controller Area Network (CAN) fieldbus as a communication infrastructure to build a distributed agency for reliable input/output operations.

To meet the required high-levels of reliability, the native CAN communication infrastructure needs to be complemented with a set of hardware/software additional mechanisms. The combination of a standard CAN layer with such dependability enhancement mechanisms, has been dubbed CAN Enhanced Layer (CANELy).

The services provided by CANELy (group communication, clock synchronization, node failure detection and membership) are of fundamental importance to the availability of mechanisms handling object replication, competition and cooperation management, useful constructs for fault-tolerant applications.

Naturally, the DARIO architecture also involves a need for a modular and generic approach to: the integration of physical input/output components; input/output event translation to/from a computational entity; uniform treatment of input/output events and message events information flows; provision of fault-tolerance and real-time guarantees.A modular approach should also be followed in the mapping and/or adaptation of the generic architecture to specific technologies, thus limiting the overall impact of technological aspects on system design.

On the other hand, the programmers of distributed control applications require constructs hiding as much as possible the implementation details of the underlying infrastructure (object-orientation).

Other aspect of application design concerns the possible partition and deployment of application components at several levels of the architecture (e.g. smart sensors configuration, resident robotics applications). A solution to any of these problems in embedded environments, sometimes with scarce resources, do represent a set of real challenges that will be addressed in the context of the DARIO project.

Aims

The aim of the DARIO project is the definition and design of a distributed agency for reliable input/output operations using the Controller Area Network (CAN) fieldbus as a communication infrastructure. To achieve this aim the project will:

• Provide the definition and design of a highly dependable real-time communication fieldbus bus infrastructure based on the Controller Area Network (CAN), the CAN Enhanced Layer.
• Address specific middleware issues concerning event-based protocols featuring fusion of events from/to objects and from/to the real world (sensors/actuators).
• Provide a proof of concept through a prototype of the generic-events middleware integrated with the CANELy communication infrastructure.

Approach and Methods

The project is organized in the following workpackages: project management; dependable real-time communication infrastructure; definition and design of CAN-oriented midleware services; definition and design of input/output agency services; prototyping of the architectural modules.

Publications

• Manuel Coutinho, José Rufino, Carlos Almeida, “Response Time Analysis of Asynchronous Periodic and Sporadic Tasks Scheduled by a Fixed-Priority Preemptive Algorithm”, in Proceedings of the EUROMICRO Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2008), Prague, Czech Republic, July 2008., Jul. 2008.

• José Rufino, Ricardo Correia Pinto, Carlos Almeida, “FPGA-based Engineering of Bus Media Redundancy in CAN”, in Proceedings of the 12th CAN in Automation (CiA) International CAN Conference. Barcelona, Spain, March 2008., Mar. 2008.

• José Rufino, Ricardo Correia Pinto, Carlos Almeida, “A FPGA-based solution for enforcing dependability and timeliness in CAN”, in Proceedings of the IP Based Electronic System Conference and Exhibition (IP07). Grenoble, France, December 2007., Dec. 2007.

• Manuel Coutinho, “Integração Modular de Dispositivos de Entrada/Saída em Plataformas de Controlo Distribuído”, Master’s thesis, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto Superior Técnico, Dec. 2007. (in Portuguese)

• José Rufino, Carlos Almeida, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “Enforcing Dependability and Timeliness in Controller Area Networks”, in Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON06), Paris, France, November, 2006., Nov. 2006.

• Manuel Coutinho, Carlos Almeida, José Rufino, “VITRAL - A Text Mode Window Manager for Real-Time Embedded Kernels”, in Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2006), Prague, Czech Republic, September, 2006., Sept. 2006.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Carlos Almeida, Guilherme Arroz, “Integrating Inaccessibility Control and Timer Management in CANELy”, in Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2006), Prague, Czech Republic, September, 2006., Sept. 2006.

• Carlos Almeida, José Rufino, “Interconnected Embedded Systems: Challenges and Main Problems to Solve”, in Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS06 Work in Progress Sessions), Torino, Italy, June, 2006., Jun. 2006.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, Carlos Almeida, “Control of Inaccessibility in CANELy”, in Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS06), Torino, Italy, June, 2006., Jun. 2006.

• Gonçalo Rijo, Carlos Almeida, José Rufino, “Gestão do consumo em microprocessadores: Aumento da autonomia sem comprometer a funcionalidade”, in Actas das Terceiras Jornadas de Engenharia de Electrónica e Telecomunicações e de Computadores (JETC05), Lisboa, Portugal, Novembro 2005., Nov. 2005.

• Manuel Coutinho, José Rufino, Carlos Almeida, “VITRAL: A text mode windows manager for RTEMS”, in Actas das Terceiras Jornadas de Engenharia de Electrónica e Telecomunicações e de Computadores (JETC05), Novembro 2005., Nov. 2005.

• Manuel Coutinho, José Rufino, Carlos Almeida, “Control of event handling timeliness in RTEMS”, in Proceedings of the 17th IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems (PDCS 2005), Phoenix, Arizona, USA, November 2005., Nov. 2005.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “Node Failure Detection and Membership in CANELy”, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN03). San Francisco, California, USA, June 2003., Jun. 2003.

• José Rufino, “Computational System for Real-Time Distributed Control”, Ph.D. dissertation, Technical University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, Jul. 2002.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “Design of Bus Media Redundancy in CAN”, in Fieldbus Technology - Systems Integration, Networking, and Engineering. Proceedings of International Symposium on Fieldbus Systems and their Applications (FeT-99). Magdeburg, Germany, September 1999. Dietrich, D.; Neumann, P.; Schweinzer, H. (Eds.)., Sept. 1999.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “A Columbus' Egg Ideia for CAN Media Redundancy”, in Digest of Papers of the 29th IEEE International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (FTCS-29), Madison, Wisconsin, USA, June 1999., Jun. 1999.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “Embedded Platforms for Distributed Real-Time Computing: Challenges and Results”, in Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Object-oriented Real-Time distributed Computing. Saint Malo, France, May 1999., May 1999.

• Luís Rodrigues, M. Guimarães, José Rufino, “Fault-Tolerant Clock Synchronization in CAN”, in Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, Madrid, Spain, Dec. 1998.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “Defining a CAN-based Infrastructure for Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Distributed Computing”, in Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium - Work In Progress Sessions. Madrid, Spain, December 1998., Dec. 1998.

• José Rufino, Nuno Pedrosa, José Monteiro, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, “Hardware support for CAN fault-tolerant communication”, in Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, Lisboa, Portugal, September 1998, Sept. 1998.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, Guilherme Arroz, Carlos Almeida, Luís Rodrigues, “Fault-Tolerant Broadcasts in CAN”, in Digest of Papers, The 28th IEEE International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing. Munich, Germany, June, 1998., Jun. 1998.

• Paulo Verissimo, José Rufino, Li Ming, “How hard is hard real-time communication on field-buses?”, in Digest of Papers, The 27th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing. Seattle - USA, July 1997. IEEE, Jul. 1997.

• José Rufino, Paulo Verissimo, “A Study on the Inaccessibility Characteristics of the Controller Area Network”, in Proceedings of the 2nd International CAN Conference. London, United Kingdom, October 1995., Oct. 1995.

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