Onboard guarded software upgrading: motivation and framework

Abstract

The goal of the guarded software upgrading (GSU) framework is to minimize mission performance loss due to onboard software upgrading activities and that due to system failure caused by residual faults in an upgraded version. We exploit inherent system resource redundancies as the means of fault tolerance to meet the development cost and onboard resource constraints. Furthermore, we devise a message-driven confidence-driven protocol to facilitate effective and efficient error containment and recovery.