Embedded Software Architecture Research Articles

Embedded software of the KM3NeT central logic board

The KM3NeT Collaboration is building and operating two deep sea neutrino telescopes at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The telescopes consist of latices of photomultiplier tubes housed in pressure-resistant glass spheres, called digital optical modules and arranged in vertical detection units. The two main scientific goals are the determination of the neutrino mass ordering and the discovery and observation of high-energy neutrino sources in the Universe. Neutrinos are detected via the Cherenkov light, which is induced by charged particles originated in neutrino interactions. The photomultiplier tubes convert the Cherenkov light into electrical signals that are acquired and timestamped by the acquisition electronics. Each optical module houses the acquisition electronics for collecting and timestamping the photomultiplier signals with one nanosecond accuracy. Once finished, the two telescopes will have installed more than six thousand optical acquisition nodes, completing one of the more complex networks in the world in terms of operation and synchronization. The embedded software running in the acquisition nodes has been designed to provide a framework that will operate with different hardware versions and functionalities. The hardware will not be accessible once in operation, which complicates the embedded software architecture. The embedded software provides a set of tools to facilitate remote manageability of the deployed hardware, including safe reconfiguration of the firmware. This paper presents the architecture and the techniques, methods and implementation of the embedded software running in the acquisition nodes of the KM3NeT neutrino telescopes. Program summaryProgram title: Embedded software for the KM3NeT CLBCPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/s847hpsns4.1Licensing provisions: GNU General Public License 3Programming language: CNature of problem: The challenge for the embedded software in the KM3NeT neutrino telescope lies in orchestrating the Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) to achieve the synchronized data acquisition of the incoming optical signals. The DOMs are the crucial component responsible for capturing neutrino interactions deep underwater. The embedded software must configure and precisely time the operation of each DOM. Any deviation or timing mismatch could compromise data integrity, undermining the scientific value of the experiment. Therefore, the embedded software plays a critical role in coordinating, synchronizing, and operating these modules, ensuring they work in unison to capture and process neutrino signals accurately, ultimately advancing our understanding of fundamental particles in the Universe.Solution method: The embedded software on the DOMs provides a solution based on a C-based bare-metal application, operating without a real-time embedded OS. It is loaded into the RAM during FPGA configuration, consuming less than 256 kB of RAM. The software architecture comprises two layers: system software and application. The former offers OS-like features, including a multitasking scheduler, firmware updates, peripheral drivers, a UDP-based network stack, and error handling utilities. The application layer contains a state machine ensuring consistent program states. It is navigated via slow control events, including external inputs and autonomous responses. Subsystems within the application code control specific acquisition electronics components via the associated driver abstractions.Additional comments including restrictions and unusual features: Due to the operation conditions of the neutrino telescope, where access is restricted, the embedded software implements a fail-safe procedure to reconfigure the firmware where the embedded software runs.

Design of embedded software architecture for spacecraft electric propulsion system

With the rapid growth of the number of spacecraft tasks and the complexity of the system, spacecraft software development is faced with the challenges of high-quality and rapid delivery, increased complexity, and frequent changes in requirements. The reuse rate of software assets needs to be improved urgently. In order to realize cross-platform and cross-project reuse of software design, this paper studies the design of electric propulsion software architecture. Carry out requirements decomposition and subsystem division of electric propulsion systems for different platforms, extract common requirements and variability requirements at the system level and subsystem level based on the Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis method, and establish a requirements model. Based on the requirements model, an electric propulsion software architecture integrating “event-driven + components” is proposed, and the classic event-driven model of “publish-subscribe” is adaptively improved. The architecture has been instantiated and applied to 16 projects on 4 platforms, and the reuse rate of core assets has reached 70%. This paper has certain guidance and reference significance for spacecraft software asset reuse and platform construction.

A System Architecture of a Fusion System for Multiple LiDARs Image Processing

LiDAR sensors are extensively used in autonomous vehicles and their optimal use is a critical concern. In this paper, we propose an embedded software architecture for multiple LiDAR sensors, i.e., a fusion system that acts as an embedded system for processing data from multiple LiDAR sensors. The fusion system software comprises multiple clients and a single server. The client and server are connected through inter-process communication. Multiple clients create processes to process the data from each LiDAR sensor via a multiprocessing method. Our approach involves a scheduling method for efficient multiprocessing. The server uses multithreading to optimize the internal functions. For internal communication within the fusion system, multiple clients and a single server are connected using the socket method. In sequential processing, the response time increases in proportion to the number of connected LiDAR sensors. By contrast, in the proposed software architecture, the response time decreases in inverse proportion to the number of LiDAR sensors. As LiDAR sensors become increasingly popular in the field of autonomous driving, the results of this study can be expected to make a substantial contribution to technology development in this domain.

Composing Optimized Embedded Software Architectures for Physics-Based EKF-MPC Smart Sensor for Li-Ion Battery Cell Management.

Efficient battery technology is imperative for the adoption of clean energy automotive solutions. In addition, efficient battery technology extends the useful life of the battery as well as provides improved performance to fossil fuel technology. Model predictive control (MPC) is an effective way to operate battery management systems (BMS) at their maximum capability, while maintaining the safety requirements. Using the physics-based model (PBM) of the battery allows the control system to operate on the chemical and physical process of the battery. Since these processes are internal to the battery and are physically unobservable, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) serves as a virtual observer that can monitor the physical and chemical properties that are otherwise unobservable. These three methods (i.e., PBM, EKF, and MPC) together can prolong the useful life of the battery, especially for Li-ion batteries. This capability is not limited to the automotive industry: any real-world smart application can benefit from a portable/mobile efficient BMS, compelling these systems to be executed on resource-constrained embedded devices. Furthermore, the intrinsic adaptive control process of the PBM is uniquely suited for smart systems and smart technology. However, the sheer computational complexity of PBM for MPC and EKF prevents it from being realized on highly constrained embedded devices. In this research work, we introduce a novel, unique, and efficient embedded software architecture for a PB-EKF-MPC smart sensor for BMS, specifically on embedded devices, by addressing the computational complexity of PBM. Our proposed embedded software architecture is created in such a way to be executed on a 32-bit embedded microprocessor running at 100 MHz with a limited memory of 128 KB, and still obtains an average execution time of 4.8 ms.

Simulation Oriented Layer of Embedded Software Architecture for Rapid Development of Custom Embedded Systems Virtual Simulators Used in Didactics

The application of the proposed Simulation Oriented Layer in the embedded-software architecture is shown in this paper. The SOL’s purpose is to deliver only limited and highly desirable microprocessor-system functionality to the Application Layer, which would be implemented in a virtual simulator without requiring its complex development. It was used in two virtual simulators of embedded systems, as presented in the article. Each virtual simulator covers one customized embedded system (RPILAB and TMSLAB) used for didactical purposes. On each embedded platform, a different method of system-functionality simulation was shown. Presented virtual simulators can run recompiled (for the virtual-simulator platform) programs in a seamless process, giving real-like experiences for programmers, who can verify and test their high-level solutions. Being accurately chosen, taken for the simulation because of essential and limited functionality, and used in the Application Layer allowed for the rapid design of the virtual simulators. Unit- and functional-test results using RPILAB- and TMSLAB-embedded systems and their virtual simulators are shown in this paper. Both simulators of real RPILAB and TMSLAB platforms are used with success in the didactical process, at the Institute of Automatic Control in Lodz University of Technology, since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visual classification of dumpsters with capsule networks

Garbage management is an essential task in the everyday life of a city. In many countries, dumpsters are owned and deployed by the public administration. An updated what-and-where list is in the core of the decision making process when it comes to remove or renew them. Moreover, it may give extra information to other analytics in a smart city context. In this paper, we present a capsule network-based architecture to automate the visual classification of dumpsters. We propose different network hyperparameter settings, such as reducing convolutional kernel size and increasing convolution layers. We also try several data augmentation strategies, as crop and flip image transformations. We succeed in reducing the number of network parameters by 85% with respect to the best previous method, thus decreasing the required training time and making the whole process suitable for low cost and embedded software architectures. In addition, the paper provides an extensive experimental analysis including an ablation study that illustrates the contribution of each component in the proposed method. Our proposal is compared with the state-of-the-art method, which is based on a Google Inception V3 architecture pretrained with Imagenet. Experimental results show that our proposal achieves a 95.35% accuracy, 2.35% over the previous best method.

An embedded software architecture for the development of a cooperative autonomous vehicle

An embedded software architecture for the development of a cooperative autonomous vehicle

An embedded software architecture for the development of a cooperative autonomous vehicle

An embedded software architecture for the development of a cooperative autonomous vehicle

Analysis and Strategy on Reliability and Security of Intelligent Electric Meter Software

In recent years, with the rapid development of smart grid, Intelligent Electric Meter is becoming more and more popular. As an important terminal of Intelligent Electric Meter development, its reliability and security play an important role in the development of Intelligent Electric Meter. However, in practical application, Intelligent Electric Meter users and power grid have more testing methods and requirements for Intelligent Electric Meter functionality. The reliability and security of smart meter software have the following problems: the software architecture is not uniform, the software testing involves less penetration testing, and the loopholes in the software testing are not easy to find. In this paper, by analyzing the embedded software architecture of Intelligent Electric Meter, combined with penetration testing method, a set of Intelligent Electric Meter software reliability and security system is established to ensure that the reliability and security test of Intelligent Electric Meter software can be carried out more scientifically.

Orderly Charging Control Module Design

This paper introduces the design of an orderly charging module. This paper analyzes the system structure of the orderly charging module, the embedded software architecture and business implementation mode of the orderly charging module, and introduces the hardware framework and implementation method of the orderly charging module. This design is mainly used in the charging pile of electric vehicle, which is used to realize intelligent and orderly charging, optimize energy management, provide various forms of Internet of things access scheme, and provide the software and hardware technology foundation for the reasonable management of energy.

Timed behavioural modelling and affine scheduling of embedded software architectures in the AADL using Polychrony

High-level modelling languages and standards, such as Simulink, UML, SysML, MARTE and AADL (Architecture Analysis & Design Language), meet increasing adoption in the design of embedded systems in order to carry out system-level analysis, verification and validation (V&V) and architecture exploration, as early as possible. These analysis, V&V, architecture exploration techniques rely on mathematical foundations and formal methods in order to avoid semantics ambiguities in the design of safety-critical systems.In order to support integration validation, it is necessary to define a formal framework of virtual prototyping to integrate, verify, exercise and analyse the application code generated by modelling tools as early as possible and virtually integrate it with simulators of third-party middleware and hardware. Such a virtual prototyping platform makes it possible to validate the expected behaviour of the final application software and check that the resulting system indeed meets the specified performance requirements before the actual hardware even actually exists.In this paper, we present the definition, development and case-study validation of such a comprehensive framework, based on the synchronous paradigm and the polychronous model of computation and communication of its supportive open-source toolset: Polychrony. A longer-term aim of our work is to equip the AADL standard with an architecture-centric framework allowing for synchronous modelling, verification and synthesis of embedded software.

CaRINA Intelligent Robotic Car: Architectural design and applications

Abstract This paper presents the development of two outdoor intelligent vehicles platforms named CaRINA I and CaRINA II, their system architecture, simulation tools, and control modules. It also describes the development of the intelligent control system modules allowing the mobile robots and vehicles to navigate autonomously in controlled urban environments. Research work has been carried out on tele-operation, driver assistance systems, and autonomous navigation using the vehicles as platforms to experiments and validation. Our robotic platforms include mechanical adaptations and the development of an embedded software architecture. This paper addresses the design, sensing, decision making, and acting infrastructure and several experimental tests that have been carried out to evaluate both platforms and proposed algorithms. The main contributions of this work is the proposed architecture, that is modular and flexible, allowing it to be instantiated into different robotic platforms and applications. The communication and security aspects are also investigated.

Reliability and Availability of Embedded Software Architectures: A Survey

This paper summarizes works based on the reliability and the availability of embedded software architectures. Nowadays, the advent of the embedded systems has pulled the development of different domains (aeronautics, automobile, industry, medicines, telecommunications, household electrical appliances, so one so far). Indeed, the embedded system includes hardware and software that must collaborate to carry out well defined complex tasks. An embedded system is an integration of heterogeneous components (components of the computing and the electronics). Indeed, the implementation of the embedded systems presents some constraints which can be, for example the system cost, energy consummation, speed of execution, reliability, availability, security ...However, among these constraints enumerated briefly, the reliability and the availability of the software architecture of these systems are the object of complete study in this article.

ESAIR: A Behavior-Based Robotic Software Architecture on Multi-Core Processor Platforms

This paper introduces an Embedded Software Architecture for Intelligent Robot systems (ESAIR) that addresses the issues of parallel thread executions on multi-core processor platforms. ESAIR provides a thread scheduling interface to improve the execution performance of a robot system by assigning a dedicated core to a running thread on the fly and dynamically rescheduling the priority of the thread. In the paper, we describe the object-oriented design and the control functions of ESAIR. The modular design of ESAIR helps improve the software quality, reliability and scalability in research and real practice. We prove the improvement by realizing ESAIR on an autonomous robot, named AVATAR. AVATAR implements various human-robot interactions, including speech recognition, human following, face recognition, speaker identification, etc. With the support of ESAIR, AVATAR can integrate a comprehensive set of behaviors and peripherals with better resource utilization.

New Solutions for Feasible and Coherent Reconfigurations of Multi-Agent Embedded Software Architectures

New Solutions for Feasible and Coherent Reconfigurations of Multi-Agent Embedded Software Architectures