FTOS: Model-driven development of fault-tolerant automation systems

Abstract

The design of fault-tolerant automation systems is a complex task. These systems must not only satisfy real-time requirements but they must also deliver the specified functionality in the presence of both software and hardware faults. To achieve fault-tolerance, systems have to use redundancy. This redundancy is usually achieved by replicating hardware units and executing the application within a distributed system. Model-based design tools promise to reduce the complexity of the design process by raising the abstraction level. However, most of the existing tools focus only on functional aspects. Code realizing extra-functional requirements such as fault-tolerance mechanisms, communication, and scheduling is not targeted. However, this type of code makes up the majority of the code of a fault-tolerant real-time system. This paper presents FTOS, a model-based development tool for the design of fault-tolerant automation systems that focuses on code generation of extra-functional requirements and therefore complements existing tools.