We present online tunable diagnostic and membership protocols for generic time-triggered (TT) systems to detect crashes, send/receive omission faults, and network partitions. Compared to existing diagnostic and membership protocols for TT systems, our protocols do not rely on the single-fault assumption and also tolerate non-fail-silent (Byzantine) faults. They run at the application level and can be added on top of any TT system (possibly as a middleware component) without requiring modifications at the system level. The information on detected faults is accumulated using a penalty/reward algorithm to handle transient faults. After a fault is detected, the likelihood of node isolation can be adapted to different system configurations, including configurations where functions with different criticality levels are integrated. All protocols are formally verified using model checking. Using actual automotive and aerospace parameters, we also experimentally demonstrate the transient fault handling capabilities of the protocols.

We present a tunable diagnostic protocol for generic time-triggered (TT) systems to detect crash and send/receive omission faults. Compared to existing diagnostic and membership protocols for TT systems, it does not rely on the single-fault assumption and tolerates malicious faults. It runs at the application level and can be added on top of any TT system (possibly as a middleware component) without requiring modifications at the system level. The information on detected faults is accumulated using a penalty/reward algorithm to handle transient faults. After a fault is detected, the likelihood of node isolation can be adapted to different system configurations, including those where functions with different criticality levels are integrated. Using actual automotive and aerospace parameters, we experimentally demonstrate the transient fault handling capabilities of the protocol.

Depending on the physical structuring of large distributed safety-critical real-time systems, one can distinguish federated and integrated system architectures. The DECOS architecture combines the complexity management advantages of federated systems with the functional integration and hardware benefits of an integrated approach. This paper investigates the benefits of the DECOS integrated system architecture as an electronic infrastructure for future car generations. The shift to an integrated architecture results in quantifiable cost reductions in the areas of system hardware cost and system development. In the paper we present a current federated Fiat car E/E architecture and discuss a possible mapping to an integrated solution based on the DECOS architecture. The proposed architecture provides a foundation for mixed-criticality integration with both safety-critical and non safety-critical subsystems. In particular, this architecture supports applications up to the highest criticality classes (10/sup -9/ failures per hour), thereby taking into account the emerging dependability requirements of by-wire functionality in the automotive industry.