Selecting a Topology for Safety-Critical Real-Time Control Systems (1998)
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@TECHREPORT{Nicholson98selectinga,
author = {Mark Nicholson},
title = {Selecting a Topology for Safety-Critical Real-Time Control Systems},
institution = {},
year = {1998}
}
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Abstract
In recent years the functionality required of computer based control systems for safetycritical real-time applications has increased dramatically. Inevitably this has led to an explosion in the complexity ofsuchsystems and an understanding, in both academia and industry, that existing design methods are no longer adequate. One design issue that has traditionally been addressed in an ad hoc and rather simplistic manner is that of setting the topology of a distributed computer based control system. A topology consists of a con gured set of hardware and software units employed to ful l a set of logical control actions. A topology may employ multiple, possibly diverse, copies of these units to ensure that dependability, timing and functional requirements are met. A designer aims to determine the set of units to be employed and how they should be con gured. A maintainer aims to discover the e ect of a change in functionality, or the units employed, on the e ectiveness of an existing topology. Potentially there are a large number of alternative feasible topologies. Unfortunately, existing techniques rely on past experience and typically set a topology very early in the design process. At best only a fraction of the admissible topologies are considered and
