Engineering Real-Time Communication Through Time-triggered Subsumption - Towards Flexibility with INCUS and LLFSMs

Abstract

Engineering real-time communication protocols is a complex task, particularly in the safety-critical domain. Current protocols exhibit a strong tradeoff between flexibility and the ability to detect and handle faults in a deterministic way. Model-driven engineering promises a high level design of verifiable and directly runnable implementations. Arrangements of logic-labelled finite-state machines (LLFSMs) allow the implementation of complex system behaviours at a high level through a subsumption architecture with clear execution semantics. Here, we show that the ability of LLFSMs to handle elaborate hierarchical module interactions can be utilised towards the implementation of testable, safety-critical real-time communication protocols. We present an efficient implementation and evaluation of INCUS, a time-triggered protocol for safety-critical real-time communication that transcends the rigidity imposed by existing real-time communication systems through the use of a high-level subsumption architecture.