Project title / Introduction /Goal / Availablity / Prerequisites / Size / Targeted students

Title of the project:

Enhancing to Control Performance by Feedforwarding the Prediction of Computer System State

Introduction:

In a reconfigurable component-based real-time system, the system is reconfigured and modified during  run-time by adding, changing, or removing software components. This implies that a system evolves and the operation of the system is tailored according to the needs of the environment with which the system is working. However, modifying the software of the system by adding or removing components results in changes in the system state. For example, the utilization, quality, or the deadline miss ratio may change due to longer execution times. This means that a computer system becomes time-variant as the behavior of computer system varies over time.

Feedback control has been introduced as a promising foundation for performance control of real-time systems. Using the reference, overshoot, and settling time, one can explicitly specify the desired steady-state and transient-state performance of the system. The feedback structure then makes sure that the specification is guaranteed. However, classical control theory relies on time-invariant systems and, hence, the feedback controllers do not conform to changes in the controlled system. To improve the performance of feedback controllers, one can feedforward information about how the system state is to evolve due to a predictable (e.g., when the user of the system reconfigures the system) change in the system. This means for example that we can predict how the utilization is to change when the system is reconfigured. This way the controller can proact rather than react to changes in the controlled system. In this project we are interested in determining control structures that feedforward the prediction of the state system due to a reconfiguration of the system. If the prediction is known then the controller is able to proact and provide improved control performance in terms of keeping the controlled variable near the reference. Based on this, the information needed for the system to proact when a component or a system is reconfigured could be extracted and stored in a convenient way in the component interfaces.

Project Goal:

The goal of this project is to develop feedback feedforward structures and extract necessary information on the component level so that the prediction of the system state is forwarded to improve the control performance.

Status:

Available

Prerequisites:

Basic knowledge in control theory

Size:

20p

Start:

As soon as possible

Target Students:

Y, D, and IT