Development of Compositional Programming Techniques for networked heterogeneous hard real-time embedded systems (TES.5410)

The purpose of this project is to introduce the compositional programming techniques in the context of real-time embedded systems composed of several co-operating processors in networked environ-ments. Application areas are for instance automotive, production machines and Personal Area Net-works (PANs). The most important addition to the traditional form of compositional programming is the use of CSP channels (Hoare, 1985; Hilderink et.al., 1999), constituting a natural addition to Object Orientation, especially when heterogeneous networked multiprocessor systems are involved.

Furthermore, it offers higher-order multithreading constructs, and is fully compatible with UML. Since networked heterogeneous hard-real time systems are often interconnected by field busses (traditional or wireless), we will show the feasibility of CSP channels on these systems by means of sophisticated demonstrators specified in agreement with the industrial partner. As a project result, we expect the resulting embedded software to be as easily exchanged and configured as the hardware components. Furthermore, the design methodology of embedded software components will be specialized towards the use of CSP channels.

At first, appropriate field busses will be selected. On one field bus, a prototype of our CSP channels including an industrial demonstrator will be implemented. In the second half of the project, CSP channels are implemented on the other chosen field busses. Some more complex demonstrators are built using the experience gained in the first project half; to test the concepts in a more advanced industrial setting.

The use of channels hides threads and priority indexing from the user, simplifying the use of priorities for the object-oriented paradigm. Moreover, the notion of scheduling is no longer connected to the operating system but has become part of the application instead. This alleviates the distributed software writing problem significantly. Furthermore, reasoning about correctness can be done, because CSP is a formal method.

Advantages for the industrial end user are at least that (1) systems can really be built component wise: the embedded software belonging to the hardware parts can as easy be coupled together as the hardware parts can; and (2) communication and scheduling is taken care of in the CSP Channel Software, thus freeing the system integrator from threads programming, while the resulting software really is multithreading.

For results, see http://www.ce.utwente.nl/FieldBusses