Towards a Flexible Time-Triggered replicated star for ethernet

Distributed embedded systems have traditionally been designed using static approaches, i.e., assuming a static environment. Such approaches, however, cannot guarantee continuous operation under dynamic environments that impose new requirements upon a system as time passes. As a solution, flexible approaches have been proposed. One such approach that allows a system to adapt to changing real-time requirements is the Flexible Time-Triggered (FTT) communication paradigm. Nevertheless, if continuous operation under dynamic environments is desired, then flexibility is not enough. Indeed, it is also crucial for the system to be sufficiently reliable. In this paper we therefore explore some design ideas to make FTT highly reliable through fault tolerance by using replication. As a starting point we will use the switch of the Hard Real-Time Ethernet Switching (HaRTES) implementation of FTT.