To guarantee that machine learning models yield outputs that are not only accurate,
but also robust, recent works propose formally verifying robustness properties of machine learning (ML)
models. To be applicable to realistic safety-critical systems, the used verification algorithms need
to manage the combinatorial explosion resulting from vast variations in the input domain,
and be able to verify correctness properties derived from versatile and domain-specific requirements.
Tools to achieve this are only beginning to emerge and are essential to safety qualification processes.
In this project we look one step further and consider the process of safety assurance, i.e. formal
documentation of absence of harm to humans and environment. The evidence for claiming safety will be based
on formalised models that not only provide transparency and accountability for ML based systems,
but also show resistance to security threats that impact safety.
Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Valency Colaco.
Funding sources: WASP WASP-LiU
Robust Deep Learning Using Symbolic Abstractions
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Deep learning (DL) systems have been widely adopted in real-world applications like speech processing and
image recognition. Ensuring correctness, robustness, and security of DL systems is of rising
importance, considering their integration in safety-critical domains (e.g., autonomous driving,
medical diagnostics and robotics). However, unlike traditional software, DL defines a new data-driven
programming paradigm that constructs the internal execution function through training data.
As a result, many existing quality-assurance techniques cannot be directly applied in DL systems.
There are three characteristics of DL systems that pose challenges for ensuring their quality:
DL systems are statistical which may not suit safety-critical applications, provide answers
without any explanations, and DL algorithms are notoriously fragile: changing a few pixels in an image
can lead to a totally different answer.
In this project we aim to understand and analyse DL systems, and explore a new technique of symbolic
representation of abstractions. The project will be carried out in collaboration with
researchers at Chalmers (Prof. Carl Seger) and Nanyang Technical University (NTU) Singapore (Prof. Yang Liu).
Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Manali Chakraborty.
Funding sources: WASP WASP-LiU
Sustainable Energy with Adaptive Security (SEAS)
Contact person: Mikael Asplund
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The aim of this project is to enable new digital services in future energy cloud ecosystems through improved security practices, including adaptive and automated risk management. Currently, there is a lack of adequate approaches to manage threats and risks in the new digital energy landscape which involve both safety and security, and which can be continuously adapted and updated throughout the entire system lifecycle. We propose an adaptive integrated safety/security risk assessment approach that enables semi-automated updates and thereby remains valid over time. This approach will allow for a more rapid pace of digitalization of the sector as it removes some of the legitimate concerns associated with exposing critical infrastructure to Internet-related threats.
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Project summary (pdf)
Involved lab members:
Mikael Asplund, Roland Plaka.
Funding sources:Vinnova
RICS2: Research centre on Resilient Information and Control Systems-Phase 2
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
The national centre for research on security in industrial control systems (RICS) was successfully ended after 5 years of running and the new phase of the work includes an extention of the activities with the goal of increasing the Swedish competence in the area through three postdoctoral projects. The projects span over
- a) modelling and analysis of SCADA systems attacks and defences with the aim of quantified risk analysis, specially relating safety and security
- b) investigating methods for remote attestations in industrial control systems and cyber-physical systems
- c) investigating the combination of different intrusion and anomaly detection mechanisms for achieving meaningful system level understanding of ongoing attacks and mitigation options.
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Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,
Mikael Asplund, Roland Plaka.
Funding sources: MSB
Security for next generation of communication networks
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Applications deployed with 5G will be facing several new security challenges. This project will be in collaboration with Prof. Thomas Johansson at Lund University, and spans a variety of research activities in 5G security. The project has a focus on security in the URLLC use case, where the goal is end-to-end latencies of a few milliseconds with optimized use of resources in presence of a chain of viable security mechanisms. It includes development and analysis of cryptographic algorithms and protocols working in low latency and constrained environments and study of implementation weaknesses of security protocols through side-channels. Further activities include investigating the impact of quantum computers on 5G security solutions, and proofs for security of protocols, and cross layer analysis of security with preservation of latency in IoT/CPS applications.
Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Navya Sivaraman.
Funding sources: ELLIIT
Secure Communication Mechanisms for Trustworthy Vehicular Coordination
Contact person: Mikael Asplund
The purpose of this project is to investigate secure communication mechanisms that allow trust to be established between vehicles. Examples of such mechanism are the verification of the physical location of nearby vehicles and also the sharing of that information within the group to enable trust propagation. Key challenges that will be considered include limited and congestion-prone communication channels, lack of ubiquitous communication infrastructure, and the possibility of reputation attacks from malicious entities.
Involved lab members:
Felipe Boeira, Mikael Asplund.
Funding sources: CUGS
Resource-efficient edge computing
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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Future applications with massive sensor deployments, communication, control and potentially humans in the loop, will have large data processing and distributed computing requirements with low latency.
This requires a leap change from today’s IoT to cloud solutions that are effectively centralised with a single regime for resource allocation and optimisation.
Edge computing promises to bring the computation closer to the end devices and includes architectural differences that both enhance real-time properties and comply with certain security/privacy concerns.
In this project the resource management of edge-based applications are studied, both by contributing to a simulation platform, and aiming at realisation of demonstrators. |
Involved lab members:
Klervie Toczé, Simin Nadjm-Tehrani.
Funding sources: CUGS
Assurance for safety-critical systems that include machine learning
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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Autonomous systems are promoted as a means of achieving a whole new range of services using the promises of AI and machine learning.
These technologies when used in a safety-critical system have a problem: their formal verification of safety, reliability, and availability is not well-studied,
and the lack of available methods for evaluating their correctness with respect to specifications is a hinder to deployment in systems that require stringent certification.
This project, starts with conceptualisation of assurance in this context means and contributes to development of methods for efficient analysis and assurance for such systems. |
Involved lab members:
John Törnblom (industrial PhD student from Saab Aerosystems), Ingemar Söderqvist (co-advisor from Saab Aerosystems), Simin Nadjm-Tehrani.
Funding sources: WASP WASP-LiU
Conceptual analysis of architectures for functional scalability, fault tolerance and security
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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New methodologies that deal with the rapid explosion of volume and significance of software in avionic systems so that added functionality can be created with lower costs is a hallmark of
this project supported by the national program within innovation for airborne systems.
The project will study model-based development at an early concept design stage so that major architectural choices that may lead to defects with respect to safety, security,
and resource adequacy when new functions are added in the future can be easily identified and dealt with. |
Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Rodrigo Moraes.
Funding sources: NFFP7-04890, Vinnova in collaboration with Saab Aerosystems
Past Projects
IoT för offentlig logistik
Contact person: Mikael Asplund
Vinnova funded project that investigates the use of
IoT for improving logistics in the public sector. The lab is involved
in a sub-project together with Östgötatrafiken for making use of
public transport traffic data to increase the understand of how
congestion appears in the city and how it affects public transport.
Involved lab members:
Mikael Asplund.
Funding sources: Vinnova
RICS: Research centre on Resilient Information and Control Systems
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
RICS is a Swedish national research Centre on Resilient Information and Control Systems. The centre is financed by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) to promote long term research and competence in securing systems on which societal functions depend. In an initial phase of the centre the focus will be on the critical information infrastructures on which provision of electricity, water and heat systems depend. The research work will rest on the following three pillars:
- Data analysis and emulation
- Risk and vulnerability analysis using attack modelling
- Real-time detection of adverse events and anomalies
Swedish fact sheet, English fact sheet.
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Involved lab members:
Chih-Yuan (Sana) Lin, Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Vacant.
Funding sources: MSB
Project Webpage: www.rics.se
Verifiable real-time coordination for safe cooperative driving
Contact person: Mikael Asplund
This project is founded on three pillars: the current state of the art in vehicular real-time communication and safety message dissemination, new advances in formal methods allowing previously intractable problems to be solved, and the mature body of work concerning fault-tolerant algorithms for distributed systems. Platooning for heavy-duty vehicles will serve as the main application area and demonstration platform with Scania AB acting as a key reference. The project iterates on the following three objectives:
- Investigating suitable modelling languages for specification and verification of vehicular coordination algorithms and protocols.
- Investigating the design, implementation and evaluation of basic fault-tolerant and secure coordination mechanisms that supports reliable coordination mechanisms at the application layer.
- Investigating strategies for formally proving correctness of coordination algorithms.
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Involved lab members:
Mikael Asplund.
Funding sources: CENIIT
Project Webpage: Verifiable real-time coordination for safe cooperative driving
NFFP6-00917 - Concept/architecture modelling methodology
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Period: 2015-2018
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This projects studies new development methodologies for the Integrated Modular Avionics concept to evaluate performance in early stages of design. It combines the model-based techniques both from an application modelling perspective, and a platform modelling perspective. The aim is to support the system engineer in processes that involve migration over multiple platforms/architectures (including multicore), or upgrades with respect to new functionality on the same platform, using well defined interfaces.
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Involved lab members: Jalil Boudadjar, Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Nils Axelsson.
Funding sources: Vinnova
NFFP6-01203 - Hardware and software inter-play in multicore avionics
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Period: 2014-2016
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This project studies the integration of multicore processors in future avionic systems and in particular, the interplay between software resource requirements and hardware architecture and resource arbitration functions. It aims to develop methods to be used for constructing assurance of determinism in time and space in presence of multicore architecture constraints.
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Involved lab members: Andreas Löfwenmark, Simin Nadjm-Tehrani.
Funding sources: Vinnova
Energy-efficient mobile communication
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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Energy is a valuable resource for battery-driven devices which calls for its optimal utilisation. Energy efficiency has attracted a great attention motivated by short battery lifetimes in part due to wireless interfaces, which account for a large part of the total consumed energy.
This project aims to develop tools and methods to support the energy-efficient design and operation of mobile communication. A core element of the project is based on providing solutions to efficiently quantify the energy consumption due to data communication of software components as well as analysing and improving their energy footprint (e.g., mobile applications).
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Involved lab members:
Involved lab members: Ekhiotz Jon Vergara, Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Aruna Prem Bianzino.
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/labs/rtslab/energy-efficient-networking/
SecFutur
Period: 2010-2013
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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Security has always been a stepchild to the developers of embedded
systems. In the past they were able to rely on physical protection. Due
to the connectivity and ubiquity of today's embedded systems this is no
longer possible. The aim of SecFutur is to develop and establish a
security engineering process for embedded systems. In order to achieve
this overall goal SecFutur will provide a set of implemented
resource-efficient security building blocks for embedded systems, each
addressing a specific complex non-functional requirement, and a security
engineering framework that supports the developer in integrating these
building blocks into the overall engineering process. SecFutur targets
the developer of embedded systems who by using the project results will
be able to follow an application driven security
engineering approach and increase the overall security of the system.
Practical scenarios from several security-relevant application areas
will be used in SecFutur to evaluate and demonstrate the advances
towards secure resource-efficient embedded systems.
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Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Maria Vasilevskaya, Laurent Delosières, Massimiliano Raciti,
Funding sources:European Union FP7 program
Project partners:Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology
(Germany), Ascom (Switzerland), Infineon Technologies (Germany),
Institution of the Russian Academy of Sciences St.Petersburg (Russia),
Mixed Mode GmbH (Germany), SEARCH-LAB (Hungary), Universidad de Malaga
(Spain), Queensland University of Technology (Australia), Telefonica
(Spain).
Project Webpage: http://www.secfutur.eu/
Delay-tolerant networks: protocols, optimisation, and connectivity models
Period: 2008-2011
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
This project addresses reliable delivery in partition-tolerant and
resource-constrained networks in three directions:
- designing a multicast algorithm for delay- and partition-tolerant networks,
- constructing abstract models of connectivity to systematically study
trade-offs in such networks, and
- studying the use of resource-utility functions in routing
algorithms for optimisation of resources.
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Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,
Mikael Asplund,
Laurent Delosières
Funding sources: Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR)
Hastily Formed Networks with Heterogeneous Users
Period: 2008-2011
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
| The goal of this work is to study the issues
associated with the deployment of Hastily formed networks (HFN) in a
disaster management scenario with heterogeneous actor groups and
diversified communication and leadership/cultural traditions. The
vehicle for the study will be a technical platform in the form of a
simulation environment in which algorithms for reliable and secure
communication will be developed and tested. The organisation and
interaction aspects will be studied with the aim of enhancing
interoperability among the diverse end users, and establishing a
conversation space. |
Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,
Mikael Asplund,
Ekhiotz Vergara,
Johan Sigholm,
Jordi Cucurull
Funding sources: Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB)
Project partners: Department of Technology and Social Change (Tema-T), Department of Science and Technology (ITN), Omegapoint AB
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/~rtslab/HFN
Adhoc Networks of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ( UAV-MANET)
Period: 2005-2011
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project is based on a long term industrial research problem for
managing networks of cooperating UAVs connected via adhoc networks. An example application
for such networks is time-constrained reconnaisance missions. One of the first
issues that distinguish such networked UAVs from other MANETs in the literature are their
specific mobility patterns. The project will start by studying suitable mobility models
for UAV networks and goes on to model services delivered to mobile ground stations in presence
of constraints. The considered constraints will range over safety-related, security-induced,
and resource constraints leading to QoS requirements (bandwith optimisation, latency, etc).
The work is carried out by an industrial PhD student that is employed at Saab Aerospace.
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Involved lab members:
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,
Erik Kuiper
Funding sources: SAVE-IT National Graduate School, Swedish Knowledge Foundation (KK Stiftelsen)
Project partners: Saab Aerospace, Linköping
Incremental Verification of Modular Avionic Architectures (NFFP4)
Period: 2006-2009
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project is part of the current national aerospace
research program (NFFP4-S4207), with a focus on distributed modular avionics (DMA)
architectures and their incremental verification. The project is carried out
in cooperation with Chalmers university (Dependable Real-time Systems group),
Saab Aerospace (Linköping) and Saab avitronics (Jönköping). Our part of the
project concerns assurance of system dependability by focusing on faults within
components and the propagation of their effects to other components. We aim to
adapt and apply techniques for compositional formal verification of component-based
systems to DMA architectures. The project also has a demonstration phase in which
developed processes for certification of COTS increments to an existing avionic subsystem
will be illustrated.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Jonas Elmqvist
Funding sources: National Agency for Aerospace Research (NFFP)
Project partners: Saab Aerospace, Saab Avitronics, Chalmers
Component-based design of safety-critical vehicular systems (SAVE++)
Period: 2002-2008
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
The goal of this project is to establish an engineering
discipline for systematic development of component-based software for safety-
critical embedded systems. The main innovation of SAVE is the interdisciplinary
combination of architectural and component based design with analysis and
verification, in the specific context of safety and real-time. The main
challenges in component-based development of safety-critical applications
are to handle the multitude of conflicting requirements, including safety
vs. cost and time-to-market. SAVE will address the above by developing
a general framework for component-based development of safety-critical
vehicular systems, including
- Methodology and process for development of systems with components
- Component specification and composition, providing a component model which
includes the basic characteristics of safety-critical components and infrastructure
supporting component collaboration
- Techniques for analysis and verification of functional correctness, real-time
behaviour, safety
- Run-time and configuration support, including support for assembling components
into systems, run-time monitoring, and evaluation of alternative configurations.
The project has been entended from its initial 3 year period to encompass a 2-year
extension in which the above tracks of research will be integrated and demostrated.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Jonas Elmqvist
Past members (2002-2005): Jörgen Hansson, Aleksandra Tesanovic
Funding sources: SSF (Swedish Strategic Research Foundation)
Project partners: Mälardalen University (Hans Hansson, Ivica Crnkovic), Royal Institute of Technology (Martin Törngren), Uppsala University
(Wang Yi, Paul Pettersson), Several Swedish industrial partners from the motor industry sector, railways, and aerospace (Saab Aerospace in Linköping).
QoS Management of Real-time Data Services (QSRTDS)
Keywords: Real-time Data Services, Real-time Databases, QoS Management, Feedback Control Scheduling, Distributed Systems, Sensor Networks
Period: 2002-2007
Contact person: Jörgen Hansson
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The goal of this project is to develop platforms for real-time data services that involve techniques for managing unpredictability of the environment, handling imprecise or incomplete knowledge of the workload, reacting to overloads and unexpected failures (i.e., those not expressed by design-time failure assumptions), to achieve the performance requirements and temporal behavior necessary for accomplishing the specified tasks.
To address this problem, we aim at developing a management framework for real-time data services that provides guarantees on QoS and QoD in terms of several fundamental performance metrics for real-time applications. In order to provide guarantees, the system must be able to adapt to changes to the external environment, e.g. applied workload and/or execution time estimation errors. Initial research shows that feedback control scheduling is able to deal with dynamic systems that are both resource insufficient and that exhibit unpredictable workloads. Feedback control real-time scheduling defines error in terms for system behavior, i.e. the difference between desired and actual system behavior. The error is continuously monitored, and the system is adjusted to maintain desired performance. Our research focuses on using feedback control scheduling as initial research has been promising in providing satisfactory QoS and QoD guarantees.
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Involved lab members: Jörgen
Hansson, Mehdi Amirijoo
Funding sources: CENIIT (Center for Industrial Information Technology) and CUGS
Project partners: Sang H. Son, University of Virginia USA and Svante Gunnarsson, Linköping University
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/~rtslab/projects/QoSRTDS/
Anomaly detection in Mobile Adhoc Networks (Adhoc-Sec)
Period: 2006-2008
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project aims to develop distributed algorithms
for adaptive anomaly detection in resource-constrainted adhoc networks.
In particular, we study how detection of attacks and intrusions can be performed
with little overhead in terms of computational resources, but utilising the
knowledge about the normal behaviour of user applications in terms of network
resource consumption, QoS parameters, amd their adaptation to dynamic changes
in the network. This work complements emerging trust models for adhoc and P2P
networks. Its applications are envisaged where the adhoc solutions
are used as an ingredient to bridge fixed infrastructure networks during failures
or overloads, or simply to extend the reach of existing critical infrastructures.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Calin Curescu, Boris Schaefer
Funding sources: National Graduate school in Computer Science (CUGS)
Dependable Distributed Systems (DeDiSys)
Period: 2004-2007
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project is conducted under the Sixth Framework Programme
of the European Community and is a Specific Targeted Research and
Innovation Project (STREP). The goal of the project is to provide a
concept for optimizing dependability in distributed component based
systems. It comprises an architecture, well defined technology
integration rules, metrics for evaluation, as well as prototype
implementations. The aim is not to obtain a new middleware, but
integrate and reuse existing off-the-shelf products (as COM, CORBA,
EJB). The idea is to use replication for transparent fault tolerance
and persistence, the focus being on the trade-off between consistency
and availability. For this a combination of synchronous and
asynchronous replication is used. The studies are oriented towards
measuring the trade-off and configuring it to allow an
application-specific optimum of availability. The project also aims at
the design and implementation of a fault-tolerant naming service
adapted to the context of availability-consistency trading.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Mikael Asplund
Funding sources: Sixth Framework Programme of the EU.
Project partners: Vienna University of Technology, Wroclaw
University of Technology, Instituto Technológico de
Informatica, FREQUENTIS G.m.b.H., ETRA
Investigación Y Desarrollo, S.A., Cosylab,
laboratorij za kontrolne sisteme, d.o.o., XLAB Razvoj
programske opreme in svetovanje d.o.o.
Project Webpage: http://www.dedisys.org
Real-Time Databases for Engine Control in Automobiles (RTDBEngCtrl)
Keywords: real-time systems, databases, data management
Period: 2002-2006
Contact person: Jörgen Hansson
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This research project focuses on the data management in software of
real-time and embedded systems. This is an important class of systems
since they are used in different areas. Distinguishing features of such
systems are that the amount of data items in such applications can be
high with freshness requirements on the data items and at the same time
have deadlines on calculations.
By using a central repository for data management, one can avoid
unnecessary storing of data at different processes, which enhances
software maintainability and fosters better software evolution due to
the simpler structure and the removal of data subscription models. This
also simplifies the programmers' tasks since large parts of data
synchronization can be performed by the database, and that time
constraints, such as data validity, can be enforced by the database. Current focus of this research project is on maintaining data freshness
such that transactions in a database system use fresh data and the
required load imposed by making data fresh are state dependent. This
means that resources can be better utilized instead of designing the
data management for the worst-case scenario. Freed CPU resources can
for instance be used for enhanced diagnosis of the system.
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Involved lab members: Jörgen Hansson,Thomas Gustafsson, Hugo Hallqvist
Funding sources: Information Systems for Industrial Control and Supervision (ISIS)
Project partners: Mecel AB and Fiat-GM Powertrain
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/labs/rtslab/projects/ISIS_DB_EngineControl
Adaptive Quality of Service (AQOS)
Period: 2001-2006
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project aims to combine architectures and algorithms
for adaptive management of resource allocation in networked applications.
In particular, we study how user requirements in terms of Quality of Service
(QoS) can be met by system level resource allocation, when there are several
types of uncertainties present. We study algorithms for resource allocation
both locally (in one node) and at a global level. The project started
by studying the load control problem for radio network controllers in 3rd
Generation mobile telecom, and will continue by studying the general problem
in multi-resource multi-criteria settings. We adopt a combination of
techniques from the areas of real-time systems, artificial intelligence,
and control theory. The research is conducted in cooperation with researchers
from UNCC who are supported by a three year travel grant from NSF.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,Calin Curescu, various masters students
Funding sources: National Graduate school in Computer Science (CUGS),National Science Foundation (USA)
Project partners: University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC),Teresa Dahlberg and Kayvan Najarian
Analysis of fault-tolerance in real-time distributed systems (Ceniit-00.11)
Period: 2000-
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project studies the application of fault-tolerant techniques in
distributed systems. We study formal models of fault-tolerance for achieving safety (in safety-critical systems) and availability (in telecommunication applications). The work focuses on replication techniques in general, and group services in the case of software intensive monitoring systems, in particular. In this project we will study the impact of other typical demands on a system, e.g. real-time demands and dynamic resource allocation in the achieved levels of fault-tolerance. To this end, trade-off studies are performed to study various approaches for implementing fault-tolerance in the middleware in presence of real-time and resource utilisation requirements.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,Diana Szentivanyi,Calin Curescu
Funding sources: CENIIT (Center for Industrial Information Technology in Linköping)
Project partners: Ericsson Radio Systems
Systems Engineering for Complex, Hybrid Systems (COHSY)
Period: 1994-2000
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project is a multi-disciplinary effort to promote improvements in the system engineering process, in particular systems with heterogenenous components ranging from mechanical, hydarulic and electromechanical elements to software and electronics. The project is organised in a number of tracks including the following three at RTSLAB:
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Involved lab members: Anders Törne,
Erik Herzog,
Asmus Pandikow,
Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Funding sources: Nutek
Project partners: Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Linköping University, Saab AB, Volvo Aero
Project Webpage: http://hydra.ikp.liu.se/COHSY
COMponent-based Embedded real-Time database systems (COMET)
Keywords: embedded databases, real-time and embedded systems, component-based software engineering
Period: 1994-2000
Contact person: Jörgen Hansson
The goal of this research is to bridge the gap between embedded systems, real-time systems and database systems, with a particular focus on the software development tools. Significant amount of research has focused on how to incorporate database functionality into real-time systems without jeopardizing timeliness and how to incorporate real-time behavior into embedded systems. However, research for embedded databases used in embedded real-time systems, that explicitly address (i) the development and design process, and (ii) the limited amount of resources in embedded systems is sparse. This type of research inherits the challenges from component-based software engineering, embedded systems and real-time systems. Further, this research explicitly addresses system resource demand for the system in the design of the embedded database in order to minimize system resource usage. At a high level, the goal is to build an experimental research platform for building
embedded databases for embedded real-time systems. At a high-level, the platform consists of two parts. First, we intend to develop a component library, which holds a set of methods, that can be used when building an embedded database. Initially, we will develop a set components that deal with concurrency control, scheduling, main-memory techniques. At the next step, we
develop tools that, based on the application requirements, will support the designer when building an embedded database using these components. More importantly, we want to develop application tools and techniques that:
- support the designer in the composition and tailoring of an embedded database for a specific system using the developed components, and where the application requirements are given as an input;
- support the designer when analyzing the total system resource demand of the compositioned embedded database system; and
- elp the designer by recommending components and methods if multiple components
can be used, based on the application requirements.
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Involved lab members:
Jörgen Hansson,
Aleksandra Tesanovic
Funding sources: ARTES
Project partners: Volvo Construction Equipment Components AB, Upright Database Technology AB,Datex-Ohmeda
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/~rtslab/projects/ARTES_EmbeddedDatabases/welcome.html
Real-time Distributed Object Systems (ECSEL)
Period: 2000 -
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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Research on monolithic real-time systems has resulted in many
effective technologies for scheduling and resource management. Multi-processor
realisation of real-time systems extend the same technologies, where the
end-to-end performance requirements of a system are studied as a central
problem via analysis based on parameters for each processor.
In this project we propose to study how real-time techniques can be
incorporated into open distributed system architectures at design stage,
in particular in development platforms such as CORBA. The goal is to facilitate
trade-off studies at early design stage, and support component based
software development. Examples of interesting trade-offs such as
real-time/security and real-time/fault-tolerance are considered.
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Involved lab members:
Calin Curescu
Funding sources: ECSEL-STEM graduate school
System Safety (NFFP-428)
Period: 2002-2004
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project is part of the current national aerospace
research program (NFFP 3), with a focus on system safety and reliability
in integrated hardware/software real-time systems. The project is organised
in cooperation with the department of electrical engineering (Vehicular
systems) and Saab AB. Our part of the project concerns improving system
dependability by studies of how faults that lead to system failures can
be avoided. At the early design stage we consider the use of langauges
with formal sematics for specification of system components (in particular
reconfigurable components, FPGAs), and the potential for formal verification
and automatic code generation techniques. We further study how these techniques
can be combined with existing methods for safety analysis (FTA, FMEA) and
how consideration of random failures (e.g. radiation) affect the design
and verification process.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Jonas Elmqvist, Jerker Hammarberg
Funding sources: National Agency for Aerospace Research (NFFP)
Intelligent Agents for Interactive Simulation Environments - RoboCup and RoboCup Rescue (RoboCup)
Period: Jan 1999-Dec 2000
Contact person: Nancy Reed
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Interactive simulation environments are considered one of the
current promising emerging technologies. We are creating autonomous
agents as football players for RoboCup and rescue workers for the
RoboCup Rescue simulation environments. This research
focuses on the system for specifying the behavior of the agents, the
mechanisms and abstractions required for controlling their dynamic
behavior, end-user programming of the actors, and the
interaction between the agent simulator and the dynamic environment
simulator. The work is being conducted in a realistic setting by
integrating a prototype of the actors with the RoboCup soccer server
and the RoboCup Rescue simulation environment.
See also:
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Involved lab members: Paul Scerri
Johan Ydren
Funding sources: Center for Industrial Information Technology (CENIIT), CENIIT project 99.7 -- Interactive Simulation Environments.
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/~nanre/ceniit.html
Intelligent Agents Organization to Enhance Dependability and Survivability of Large Complex Critical Infrastructure (Safeguard)
Keywords: dependability, critical infrastructures, agents
Period: 2001-2004
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
SAFEGUARD aims to enhance the dependability and survivability of Large Complex Critical Infrastructures (LCCIs), such as distributed electric and telecommunication networks. Modern automation systems underlying LCCIs include different levels of automation, regulation, and control, but "intelligent" functions relating to critical issues such as safety and system survivability are usually monitored or executed by human operators. We are primarily interested in improving dependability and survivability of large infrastructures by:
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Analysing of the structure and dynamics of LCCIs and their underlying Networked Information Intensive Systems, to identify their vulnerable processes and components, and to model and validate adequate critical indicators of its functionality and integrity, which directly influence survivability and dependability of the whole system.
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To investigate and develop an organisation of SAFEGUARDs, modelled as a cognitive agent-based structure, and validate middleware component solutions, with the role of an integral supervisory system including an auto-defence against different intrusions, accidental or deliberate. All methods should be error tolerant themselves, such as can be achieved by a step by step bottom up approach.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,
Kalle Burbeck
, Tobias Chyssler, Tomas Lingvall, Daniel Garpe, Sara G. Andres
Funding sources: EU - IST program
Project partners: University of London (Queen Mary), Aplicaciones en Informatica Avanzada S.A. (AIA-spain), Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, L'Energia e l'Ambiente (ENEA-Italy), Swisscom AG (Switzerland)
Project Webpage: http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/safeguard/
Systems Engineering Data Exchange (SEDEX)
Period: January 1996 - March 1999
Contact person: Anders Törne
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The project is directed towards the development of an interface standard which will
allow the complete set of tools in design of airplanes and spacecrafts
and their avionics systems (hardware, software, mechanical design, and implementation,
project management, etc.) to communicate in such a way that an
integrated project support environment is available from commercial tools.
The interface standard will be possibly based on the STEP interface used in CAD
applications, but will be extended to add the semantics appropriate to the aircraft industry.
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Involved lab members: Anders Törne,
Erik Herzog,
Asmus Pandikow
Funding sources: European Commission (contract IST-11953)
Project partners: DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, AEROSPATIALE MATRA Lanceurs, Finmeccanica Anlenia Aerospace-Aeronautics Division,
British Aerospace MA&A, SAAB Military Aircraft, EUROSTEP Ltd., Linköpings Universitet, Loughborough University,
Technical University of Clausthal, Societa Italiana Avionica
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/projects/sedres/
Systems Engineering Data Representation and Exchange Standardisation (SEDRES)
Period: January 1996 - March 1999
Contact person: Anders Törne
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The project is directed towards the development of an interface standard which will
allow the complete set of tools in design of airplanes and spacecrafts
and their avionics systems (hardware, software, mechanical design, and implementation,
project management, etc.) to communicate in such a way that an
integrated project support environment is available from commercial tools.
The interface standard will be possibly based on the STEP interface used in CAD
applications, but will be extended to add the semantics appropriate to the aircraft industry.
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Involved lab members: Anders Törne,
Erik Herzog,
Asmus Pandikow
Funding sources: European Commission (contract IST-11953)
Project partners: DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, AEROSPATIALE MATRA Lanceurs, Finmeccanica Anlenia Aerospace-Aeronautics Division,
British Aerospace MA&A, SAAB Military Aircraft, EUROSTEP Ltd., Linköpings Universitet, Loughborough University,
Technical University of Clausthal, Societa Italiana Avionica
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/projects/sedres/
Systems Engineering Data Representation and Exchange Standardisation - 2 (SEDRES-2)
Period: January 2000 - June 2001
Contact person: Anders Törne
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This project is directed at the development of a data exchange standard
which will allow the complete set of tools used in analysis and design
of complex heterogeneous systems such as air- and spacecrafts and their avionics systems
(hardware, software, mechanical design, and implementation, project management, etc.)
to communicate in such a way that an integrated project support environment can be implemented
from commercial tools.
The proposed interface standard is developed within the STEP (ISO 10303) framework and is assigned the identifier AP-233.
The aim of the project is to drive the standardisation within STEP and to validate the proposed standard
through tool interface development and real data exchanges.
The role of RTSLAB in this project is to co-ordinate and harmonize the development of the standard.
The SEDRES-2 project is funded by the CEC in the IST programme and is a successor to the highly successful
SEDRES project (see SEDRES homepage).
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Involved lab members: Anders Törne,
Erik Herzog,
Asmus Pandikow
Funding sources: European Commission (contract IST-11953)
Project partners: DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, AEROSPATIALE MATRA Lanceurs, Finmeccanica Anlenia Aerospace-Aeronautics Division,
British Aerospace MA&A, SAAB Military Aircraft, EUROSTEP Ltd., Linköpings Universitet, Loughborough University,
Technical University of Clausthal, Societa Italiana Avionica
Project Webpage: http://www.sedres.com/
Synchronous Reactive Formalisms (SYRF)
Period: 1997-1999
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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The project is concerned with improved programming environment for the family of synchronous languages (Lustre, Signal, Esterel, and a version of Statecharts). The work in the project is organised in several work packages: combination of imperative and declarative synchronous paradigms, program verification, code distribution and multi-tasking, integrating synchrony and asynchrony, connection with hardware/software codesign, and integration of analog/discrete synchronous design. Our contributions are mainly in the last work package, dealing wit hybrid systems incorporating synchronous controllers.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Funding sources: Esprit IV - (Long Term Research)
Project partners: INRIA (Renne, Grenoble, Sophia-Antipolis), GMD Bonn, Saab AB, Schneider Electric, Electricité de France, Prover Technology
Project Webpage: http://www-verimag.imag.fr//SYNCHRONE/SYRF/syrf.html
Intelligent Pilots for the TACSI Simulation Environment (TACSIM)
Period: April 1998-Dec 2000
Contact person: Nancy Reed
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Interactive simulation environments are considered one of the
current promising emerging technologies. We are creating autonomous
agents as pilots for aircraft simulation environments. This research
focuses on the system for specifying the behavior of the agents, the
mechanisms and abstractions required for controlling their dynamic
behavior, end-user programming of the simulated pilots, and the
interaction between the agent simulator and the dynamic environment
simulator. The work is being conducted in a realistic setting by
integrating a prototype of the simulated pilots with TACSI - the
tactical aircraft simulator produced by Saab AB.
See also the
EASE agent development environment homepage and
CSIRO RoboCup Applications World-wide.
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Involved lab members: Paul Scerri
Funding sources: NUTEK projects 1K1P-97-09677, 1K1P-98-06280,
and 1K1P-99-6166.
Project partners:
Saab AB, Gripen, Operational Analysis division
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/~nanre/nutek-tacsim.html
Formal methods for hardware/software co-design (TFR-221-1998-729)
Period: 1999-2001
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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The co-design procedure for embedded systems starts from a high level description and applies partitioning algorithms in order to realise the final design as a range of hardware and software components. Common languages for design at the system level includes VHDL and C. In this project we propose enhancing the co-design procedure by adding a formal verification capability to capture early design errors prior to partitioning. For this purpose, formal languages which capture both data-flow and control-flow are explored and the integration of formal verification tools with a co-design environment is proposed.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Funding sources: TFR (Swedish research council for engineering sciences)
Combining Transactions with CORBA Replicate Groups (TRANSORG)
Keywords:
Period: 2002-2003
Contact person: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
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This project is part of the European Agents and Middleware
(AMI) initiative within the IST program. The goal of the project is to
provide insights on the cost of incorporating generic fault-tolerance mechanisms
in a middleware. The idea is to relieve the application writer in a distributed
(multi-tier client server system) from writing the code that deals with
fault tolerance when a server crashes. Instead, provide support in the
middleware so that at the conception of the application, the appropriate
replication mechanism (warm/cold passive, active), and the required parameter
settings can be supported by automatic code generation within the middleware.
We have chosen to study CORBA as a generic middleware and to study which
performance, code size, state size, and other trade-offs exist in extending
the CORBA infrastructure in compliance with the recently proposed FT-CORBA
specification. Part of the trade-off study is the overhead (time) when
there are no failures and the time taken for fail-over.
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Involved lab members: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,
Diana Szentivanyi, Isabelle Ravot
Funding sources: EU - IST program, see here for more info ...
Project partners: EPFL (Lausanne, Rachid Guerrauoi),
 Ericsson Radio Systems
Project Webpage: http://www.ida.liu.se/~rtslab/TRANSORG/
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