A Safety Real-Time Middleware for Combustion Control

Abstract

Architectures and real-time communication of distributed Embedded-Systems (programmable electronic systems, PES) are topic of many research projects and have been identified as a barrier for a fast time-to-market product development in general. At the same time, more and more flexibility and distributed intelligence is required. While modern distributed computer systems provide flexibility and re-usability through dynamic service-based architectures and standardized open structures, safety critical real-time systems are often strictly limited in the usage of such approaches. The difficulty is the combination of both, flexibility (more dynamic approaches) and safety (more static approaches). For finding a tailored solution for future burner control products while staying in the low cost range, this paper discusses a safety middleware for small Embedded-Systems with limited resources. That means, memory is limited, there is no dynamic memory management and the network capabilities are restricted. The result is a safety middleware (Mid600), including communication, data distribution and a servicebased interface, supporting a scalable distributed safety relevant burner control PES.