FG Verteilte Systeme und Betriebssysteme
Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have vast application potential from industrial logistics and disaster monitoring to smart farming, for example, to create maps with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) cameras and AI-based image classification or the precision spot application of fertilizers. Operating multiple UAVs in parallel, including those with different specializations, enables efficient coverage of large areas. While existing research focused mainly on predefined flight formations for swarms or autonomous missions for single UAVs, the focus of this work is on multiple UAVs with individually adaptable missions. We derive communication system requirements from swarm coordination algorithms and present a respective design. The resulting modular architecture enables future research on autonomous adaptive UAV swarms and their use as flying sensor platforms.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are evolving as adaptable platforms for a wide range of applications such as precise inspections, emergency response, and remote sensing.
Autonomous UAV swarms require efficient and stable communication during deployment for a successful mission execution. For instance, the periodic exchange of telemetry data between all swarm members provides the foundation for formation flight and collision avoidance. However, due to the mobility of the vehicles and instability of wireless transmissions, maintaining a secure and reliable all-to-all communication remains challenging.
This paper investigates encrypted and authenticated multi-hop broadcast communication based on the transmission of custom IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi data frames.
BLE Periodic Advertising as an Alternative to BLE Mesh and Scatternets for Multihop Communication
(2023)
Waldwächter 5G is a project about preventing damages to forests, for example by fire. For this case, sensors connected in a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) multi-hop environment are deployed to detect abnormalities. BLE is a widely spread wireless communication technology used for low power devices, such as smart home appliances or sensors. This paper presents two approaches for BLE multi-hop communication, BLE Mesh as a flooding based network primarily used for non-power-limited devices and BLE scatternets as a lose collective term for a lot of interconnected smaller networks. It then introduces the idea of a third possible option, a network topology based on a BLE 5.0 feature called Periodic Advertising (PA).
The idea of an approach to PA meshes is explained and the advantages presented.
Neverlast: Towards the Design und Implementation of the NVM-based Everlasting Operating System
(2021)
The tiny logic elements in modern integrated circuits increase the rate of transient failures significantly. Therefore, redundancy on various levels is necessary to retain reliability. However, for mixed-criticality scenarios, the typical processor designs offer either too little fault-tolerance or too much redundancy for one part of the applications. Amongst others, we specifically address redundant processor internal functional units (FU) to cope with transient errors and support wear leveling. A real-time operating system (RTOS) was extended to control our prototypical hardware platform and, since it can be configured deterministically within few clock cycles, we are able to reconfigure the FUs dynamically, at process switching time, according to the specified critically of the running processes. Our mechanisms were integrated into the Plasma processor and the Plasma-RTOS. With few changes to the original software code, it was, for example, possible to quickly change from fault-detecting to fault-correcting modes of the processor on demand.
Pinpoint the Joules: Unifying Runtime-Support for Energy Measurements on Heterogeneous Systems
(2020)
For the design and operation of today's computer systems, power and energy requirements are highest priorities. Unlike performance analyses, however, power and energy measurements of heterogeneous systems are difficult to conduct. Especially at the system-software level, performing power and energy measurements remains challenging. Yet, such measurements are essential to improve software components for low power and high energy-efficiency.In this paper, we analyze and discuss the power and energy characteristics of several heterogeneous systems with up to 20 cores (160 hardware threads) and 1 TB of main memory. For the analyzed systems, we outline challenges regarding power and energy measurements and show ways to overcome limitations (i.e., sampling constraints). To improve the current state of the art in power and energy measurements at the system-software level, we present the design and implementation of PINPOINT, an energy-profiling tool which unifies different power and energy measurement interfaces.
The strive for performance, low power consumption, and less chip area have been diminishing the reliability and the time to fault occurrences due to wear out of electronic devices. Recent research has shown that functional units within processors usually execute a different amount of operations when running programs. Therefore, these units present different individual wear out during their lifetime. Most existent schemes for reconfiguration of processors due to fault detection and other processor parameters are done at the level of cores which is a costly way to achieve redundancy. This paper presents a low latency (approximately 1 clock cycle) software controlled mechanism to reconfigure units within processor cores according to predefined parameters. Such reconfiguration capability delivers features like wear out balance of processor functional units, configuration of units according to the criticality of tasks running on an operating system and configurations to gain in performance (e.g. parallel execution) when possible. The focus of this paper is to show the implemented low latency reconfiguration mechanism and highlight its possible main features.
Scaling minimum features of ICs down to the 10nm- area and below has allowed high integration rates in electronics. Scaling at supply voltages of 1V and below also implies a rising level of stress which drives aging effects that reduce switching speed and the expected life time. Additionally, vulnerability from particle radiation is increased. Hence, fault detection and on- line correction become a must for many applications. However, not only fault tolerance but self-awareness becomes also an advantage. Provided that by being aware of its own healthy state allow optimized configurations regarding system operation modes and configurable hardware mechanism. This paper shows a preliminary work in a configurable circuit and explores its configuration possibilities when integrated into a complete system.
Cache-Line Transactions: Building Blocks for Persistent Kernel Data Structures Enabled by AspectC++
(2019)
High-speed protocol processing that provides data-rates of 100 Gbit/s and beyond to the application stresses the whole communication system up to its outer limits. Such a system can only be utilized by employing highly specialized, application specific protocols, that are tailored for certain communication parameters, such as the packet loss rate. However, the requirements for most applications are not static, and a protocol designer cannot anticipate all possible communication conditions upfront. The contradiction between specialized protocols and unknown communication parameters can be solved by adapting the protocol implementation on demand to the current communication conditions. However, such an approach needs a protocol description language that allows the automatic specialization of protocols. In this paper, we present the Protocol Engine Template Language (PETL), that allows the automatic implementation of protocols by a constructive approach for a variety of communication conditions from protocol implementation templates.