Thesis.bib

@inbook{MARAU_DAES_2007,
  author = {Marau, R. and Silva, V. and Ferreira, J. and Almeida, L. and Pedreiras, P. and Martins, E. and Fonseca, J. A.},
  title = {Distributed Automotive Embedded Systems},
  chapter = {Assessment of FTT-CAN master replication mechanisms for safety-critical applications},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {SAE International},
  year = {2007},
  volume = {},
  series = {},
  type = {},
  address = {},
  edition = {},
  month = {November},
  doi = {},
  issn = {},
  isbn = {978-0-7680-1966-7},
  keywords = {FTT, FTT-CAN, CAN, Real-Time communications, protocols, Embedded systems},
  note = {},
  key = {},
  abstract = {The operational flexibility of distributed embedded systems is receiving growing attention because it is required to support on-line adaptation to varying operational conditions, either due to changes in the environment or to faults in the system. However, flexibility makes dependability more difficult to achieve, because there is less a priori knowledge. One protocol that favors flexibility and is widely used in embedded systems, particularly in automotive and robotic systems, is CAN, but some claim that it is not adequate to support safety-critical applications. We argue that CAN, deployed with an adequate overlay protocol, can provide the required support for dependability and flexibility. One such overlying protocol is Flexible Time-Triggered CAN (FTTCAN), that enforces a global notion of time and a global periodic schedule by means of specific messages issued by a master node. In this paper we assess the FTT-CAN master replication mechanisms implemented in a distributed robot control system. Above all, we provide experimental results that show the robustness of such mechanisms}
}

@inbook{ALMEIDA_HRTES_2007,
  author = {Almeida, L. and Pedreiras, P. and Ferreira, J. and Calha, J. and Fonseca, J. A. and Marau, R. and Silva, R. and Martins, E.},
  title = {Handbook of Real-Time and Embedded Systems},
  chapter = {Online QoS Adaptation with the Flexible Time-Triggered (FTT) Communication Paradigm},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC},
  year = {2007},
  volume = {},
  series = {},
  type = {},
  address = {},
  edition = {},
  month = {},
  doi = {},
  issn = {},
  isbn = {978-1-58488-678-5},
  keywords = {Ethernet, FTT, FTT-SE, Real-Time communications},
  note = {},
  key = {},
  abstract = {}
}

@phdthesis{PEDREIRAS_SFRTCDS_2003,
  author = {Pedreiras, P.},
  title = {Supporting Flexible Real-Time Communication on Distributed Systems},
  school = {University of Aveiro},
  year = {2003},
  type = {},
  address = {Aveiro, Portugal},
  month = {June},
  note = {},
  key = {},
  abstract = {Distributed computer-control systems (DCCS) are widely disseminated, appearing in applications ranging from automated process and manufacturing control to automotive, avionics and robotics. Many of these applications comprise real-time activities, that is, activities that must be performed within strict time bounds. Due to its distributed nature, these systems comprise multiple autonomous processing units that, despite being autonomous, need to exchange data in order to achieve control over the environment. For this reason the data exchange among different nodes is also subject to real-time constraints, and thus the communication subsystem must be able to deliver data within specific time bounds.

Many DCCS applications are complex and heterogeneous, comprising different sets of activities with different properties and requirements. For instance, they commonly include periodic activities, e.g. resulting from closed loop control, and sporadic activities resulting from events that occur at unpredictable instants in time in the environment under control. These types of activities can have distinct levels of criticalness and timeliness requirements, independently of their activation nature. On the other hand, flexibility is becoming increasingly important in DCCS, due both to the need of reducing the costs of set-up, configuration changes and maintenance, and also to the recent use of DCCS in new types of applications, such as agile manufacturing, real-time databases with variable number of clients, automotive, mobile robotics in unstructured environments and automatic traffic control systems, that must deal with environments that are inherently dynamic.

To cope with such high degree of complexity and dynamism, distributed real-time systems must support both time and event-triggered communication services under timing constraints and, at the same time, they must be operationally flexible, supporting on-the-fly changes to the computational activities they execute. Concerning specifically the communication subsystem, existing real-time protocols do not generally fulfill these requirements. In systems eminently time-triggered, event-triggered services are either non-existing or handled inefficiently, while in systems eminently event-triggered, interesting properties of time-triggered services are normally lost. On the other hand, flexibility and timeliness are often considered as conflicting: systems that provide timeliness guarantees are based on a static configuration of the communication activities while systems that support dynamic changes to the communication activities do not provide timeliness guarantees}
}