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Fault-tolerant scheduling for real-time embedded control systems

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Abstract

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.

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Correspondence to Chun-Hua Yang.

Additional information

The research has been partially supported by the Teaching and Research Award Program for Outstanding Young Teachers in Higher Education Institutions of MOE, China, and partially supported by the Research Fund of K.U. Leuven (Grant No. GOA/2001/04) of Belgium.

Chun-Hua Yang received her M.S. degree in automatic control engineering from Central South University, P. R. China, in 1988, and visited the Electrical Engineering Department, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, from 1999 to 2001. She is currently a professor in the College of Information Science & Engineering, Central South University. Her research interests include fault-tolerant computing of real-time systems and complex process control.

Geert Deconinck received his M.S. degree in electrical engineering and his Ph.D. degree in applied sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 1991 and 1996 respectively. He has been a visiting professor at the K.U. Leuven since 1999 and a postdoctoral fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research — Flanders since 1997. His research interests include the design, analysis and assessment of software-based fault tolerance solutions to meet real-time, dependability and cost constraints for embedded applications on parallel and distributed systems.

Wei-Hua Gui received his M.S. degree in automatic control engineering from Central South University, P.R. China, in 1981, and studied in Universität-GH-Duisburg, Germany, from 1986 to 1988. He is currently a professor in the College of Information Science & Engineering, Central South University. His main research interests are modeling and optimal control of industrial process, distributed robust control, and fault diagnose.

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Yang, CH., Deconinck, G. & Gui, WH. Fault-tolerant scheduling for real-time embedded control systems. J. Comput. Sci. & Technol. 19, 191–202 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02944797

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