Research Areas

Optimization of Ethernet TSN for Real-Time Networks

Ethernet has recently been amended with several capabilities to support real-time and dependable application requirements. These capabilities are standardized in IEEE 802 and are commonly referred to as Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). This is in response to increasing bandwidth requirements from, for example, the automotive, industrial automation, and avionics domains. These capabilities include time synchronization, fault tolerance, and frame preemption, as well as real-time scheduling through timed gates, credit-based shapers, and asynchronous shapers. Synthesizing and optimizing such a network requires the configuration of many network parameters, such that real-time and dependability constraints are met. This research track on TSN aisms to solve problems with significant scientific challenges and practical relevance to industry.

Design of Cyber-Physical Systems with Wireless Communication and Computational Cloud Offloading

As cellular communication and cloud computing technologies improve in performance, reliability, and availability, there are opportunities to offload certain functions of real-time and safety-critical applications from embedded devices. Such trade-offs have the potential to address several issues in cost and resource constrained cyber-physical systems. This research track aims to extend the traditional system models used in embedded and real-time systems, and subsequently propose optimization methods to be applied at design time or at runtime to allocate software applications on platforms comprising both embedded computing elements and edge/cloud computing elements. The research aims to study several trade-offs among real-time performance, hardware cost, feature availability, and data communication cost.

Design and Optimization of Zonal System Architectures

The automotive industry is directionally evolving towards the adoption of zonal system architectures as the foundation for automotive embedded E/E architectures. This is in response to exponential growth of electronics/software features and the increased complexity of packaging and wiring of hardware components. Zonal architectures constitute a paradigm shift in that I/O is concentrated to physical zones across the vehicle. The introduction of zonal gateways (also called I/O aggregators or remote interface units) enables the reduction of cabling due to optimized distances among peripherals (e.g., sensors and actuators) and gateway modules. Applications are implemented on centralized compute clusters through a high-speed network backbone connecting to the I/O gateways. The avionics industry is considering similar optimized system architectures. This research track aims to solve several optimization problems primarily addressing the automateddecision of quantities and placement of zonal gateways to optimize wiring, packaging, and cost. The aim is to carry out this research in very close cooperation with automotive industry partners, preferrably through programs for industrial PhD students.

Page responsible: Soheil Samii
Last updated: 2023-02-20