New voter design enabling hot redundancy for asynchronous network nodes

Abstract

In this paper, a novel voter design is presented which allows the voting of asynchronous network streams in flow-controlled networks. The voter synchronises incoming data streams automatically and is able to handle failure modes that typically occur in streaming applications. The voter degrades to a comparator if one of the redundant channels has failed and reintegrates the channels once they are functional again. While the voter is mainly intended to be connected to a routing switch of the network, it also comprises a broadcast mechanism that enables a stand-alone operation. The design has been successfully implemented in hardware and evaluated by means of fault injection experiments.