Scientific publications

Autonomous vehicles use cyber-physical systems to provide comfort and safety to passengers. Design of safety mechanisms for such systems is hindered by the growing quantity and complexity of SoCs (System-on-a-Chip) and software stacks required for autonomous operation. Our study tackles two challenges: (1) fault handling in an autonomous driving system distributed across multiple processing cores and SoCs, and (2) isolation of multiple software modules consolidated in one SoC.

Over time, software tends to grow more complex, hampering understandability and further development. To reduce accidental complexity, model-based rejuvenation techniques have been proposed. These techniques combine reverse engineering (extracting models) with forward engineering (generating code). Unfortunately, model extraction can be error-prone, and validation can often only be performed at a late stage by testing the generated code.

The focus of this book is on the principles and the use of the system scenario approach. This concept effectively supports the efficient realization of systems in the presence of strong dynamic behavior. The efficiency can be obtained in a multi-dimensional cost space. Realizations can involve the mapping of applications on some type of implementation platforms, but the approach is not limited to this, as the demonstrators in this book illustrate.

The multi-disciplinary nature of the design of cyber-physical systems makes it hard to gain insight in the system behaviour early in the design process. Our aim is to allow the designers to analyse the integration of system components as well as the behaviour of the complete system in an early stage. This is achieved by creating abstract component models and refining them throughout the design process.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are considered as a promising solution in intravehicle networking to reduce wiring and production costs. This application requires reliable and real-time data delivery, while the network is very dense. The time-slotted channel hopping (TSCH) mode of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard provides a reliable solution for low-power networks through guaranteed medium access and channel diversity.

The well-known model of Vestal aims to avoid excessive pessimism in the quantification of the processing requirements of mixed-criticality systems, while still guaranteeing the timeliness of higher-criticality functions. This can bring important savings in system costs, and indirectly help meet size, weight and power constraints.

Vehicle platooning has been attracting attention recently because of its ability to improve road capacity, safety and fuel efficiency. Vehicles communicate using Vehicle-to- Vehicle (V2V) wireless communication, making their status (acceleration, position, etc.) available to other vehicles. Shock waves, i.