Time sensitive networking for virtualized integrated real-time systems

For many years, embedded computer systems have been designed based on federated architectures where every service of a system is mapped to a dedicated hardware unit. A federated system architecture, despite several advantages such as low architectural complexity and high level of dependability, requires a new dedicated node for every newly added function. Therefore, integrated system architectures were introduced to address the scalability issues of federated systems, assuming that every node comprises several isolated partitions and different services can execute on a single node. Nevertheless, the integrated systems require many modifications in case of any changes in a system which lead to the costly design, integration, verification and maintenance processes. Thereby, a domain-specific integrated system can be transformed into a more generic solution through resource virtualization. Such a virtualized integrated system can host several functions with different reliability constraints and temporal requirements on the virtualized computing resources. The key advantage of the virtualized integrated systems is that they are reconfigurable easily and at very low cost. Each function in the virtualized integrated system may reside either on different partitions of a single processing node or on different computers and communicate with other functions via a common networking infrastructure. Therefore, the non-functional requirements of the virtualized integrated system, including reliability, availability, integrity, safety and maintainability highly depend on the capabilities of the communication infrastructure. Moreover, the networking technology of the integrated system has a significant impact on the design, complexity management and integration process. The Ethernet standard due to its widespread usage is considered as a promising networking solution for the virtualized integrated system. However, Ethernet does not offer the fault-tolerant and deterministic communication infrastructure that is essential for modern embedded systems. Therefore, this thesis introduces a communication layer of a virtualized integrated system based on the principles of the TimeSensitive Networking (TSN) standard, which encompasses a series of protocol extensions to the Ethernet standard. TSN offers real-time capability and performance improvements while benefiting from high bandwidth and seamless connectivity of Ethernet technologies. It is essential to verify the correctness and applicability of TSN mechanisms as a networking solution for the virtualized integrated system. Therefore, this thesis presents a simulation framework for the TSN standard, which is developed as a multi-hop switched Ethernet network. The simulation framework is generic with stable interfaces between simulation components. Therefore, it can be universally applied to simulate different applications and to gain insights into different architectural decisions (e.g. different topologies, different redundancy degrees). In addition, it can be extended using additional sub-protocols of TSN and modified to incorporate future changes introduced by the TSN working group. The TSN simulator also includes dynamic configuration services, thereby enabling the modelling of dynamic applications (like train inauguration) and system adaptation (e.g. fault