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Resource and performance trade-offs in real-time embedded control systems

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Abstract

Embedded control systems are subject to conflicting demands: end-users ask for devices with better capabilities while strong industrial competition impose tight cost constrains that results in devices with limited resources. Current research in the multidisciplinary embedded systems discipline indicates that by combining real-time and control systems it is theoretically feasible to design resource-constrained embedded control systems capable of trading-off control performance and resource usage.

This paper focuses on the implementation feasibility of recent state-of-the-art resource/performance-aware (RPA) policies that can be applied to a set of control loops that concurrently execute on a microprocessor. The objective of these policies is to improve control performance and/or to minimize resource utilization. The paper first reviews existing state-of-the-art RPA policies. Then it presents a performance evaluation framework (PEF) that permits to assess whether RPA policies can be implemented in practice. The PEF is designed using a modular approach and following the guidelines obtained by a taxonomic analysis performed on the state-of-the-art RPA policies. Finally, a case study is presented where the PEF is applied to a set of representative RPA policies. The case study reveals that the modularity of the PEF allows tailoring the framework to evaluate any specific RPA policy, which indicates that RPA policies can be implemented in practice. But it also reveals that the problem of assessing diverse RPA policies in fair conditions implies facing and solving conflicting demands by even taking decisions that may not favor equal all policies under evaluation. Nevertheless, the comparative analysis permits identifying potential benefits and drawbacks of each policy, as well as extracting design guidelines for future real-time embedded control systems theory and practice.

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Notes

  1. The term “feedback scheduling”, as it will be explained in Sect. 2.1.1, was first introduced to denote policies that use feedback from scheduling to on-line apply different sampling periods and adapt controllers’ parameters. Although this applies to a subset of the approaches reviewed later in this category, the paper also includes under this category approaches where the sampling period that applies on-line is selected off-line considering its impact on control performance according to different strategies. Hence, the term “feedback” may no longer refer to feedback as it is interpreted in control, but in a more general sense.

  2. Details of the prototype and performance demonstrator that includes three plants in the form of double integrator electronic circuits can be found in Velasco et al. (2010).

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  1. Automatic Control Department, Technical University of Catalonia, Pau Gargallo 5, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Camilo Lozoya, Pau Martí, Manel Velasco, Josep M. Fuertes & Enrix X. Martin

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  1. Camilo Lozoya
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  2. Pau Martí
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Lozoya, C., Martí, P., Velasco, M. et al. Resource and performance trade-offs in real-time embedded control systems. Real-Time Syst 49, 267–307 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11241-012-9174-9

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