An Extensible Partitioning Framework for Safety-Critical Systems

International audienceCertification of safety-critical systems requires a separation of certified and non-safe components. Up to today, partitioning operating systems, that have the capability to isolate software components in safety-critical systems, are almost exclusively found in complex embedded systems with standardized runtime environments, e.g. in the avionic industry. On the other hand, their use is highly uncommon in deeply-embedded systems, that are frequently characterized by severe power, memory, and latency constraints. Here we show, how partitioning can be efficiently provided in deeply-embedded systems. For this purpose, we propose a framework for highly customized and constrained embedded devices, which achieves the separation of software components using a legacy real-time operating system. The approach focuses on the flexibility and low complexity of the framework in order to minimize the effort for safety certification. The framework is modular and extensible