This dissertation explores several challenges that plague the hardware-software co-design of popular resource constrained real-time embedded systems. We specifically tackle existing real-world problems, and address them through our design solutions which are highly scalable, and have practical feasibility as verified through our solution implementation on real-world hardware.
We address the problem of poor battery life in mobile embedded devices caused due to side-by-side execution of multiple applications in split-screen mode. Existing industry solutions either restricts the number of applications that can run simultaneously, limit their functionality, and/or increase the hardware capacity of the battery associated with the system. We exploit the gap in research on performance and power trade-off in smartphones to propose an integrated energy management solution, that judiciously minimizes the system-wide energy consumption with negligible effect on its quality of service (QoS).
Another important real-world requirement in today's interconnected world is the need for security. In the domain of real-time computing, it is not only necessary to secure the system but also maintain its timeliness. Some example security mechanisms that may be used in a hard real-time system include, but are not limited to, security keys, protection of intellectual property (IP) of firmware and application software, one time password (OTP) for software certification on-the-fly, and authenticated computational off-loading. Existing design solutions require expensive, custom-built hardware with long time-to-market or time-to-deployment cycle. A readily available alternative is the use of trusted execution environment (TEE) on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) embedded processors. However, utilizing TEE creates multiple challenges from a real-time perspective, which includes additional time overhead resulting in possible deadline misses. Second, trusted execution may adversely affect the deterministic execution of the system, as tasks running inside a TEE may need to communicate with other tasks that are executing on the native real-time operating system. We propose three different solutions to address the need for a new task model that can capture the complex relationship between performance and predictability for real-time tasks that require secure execution inside TEE. We also present novel task assignment and scheduling frameworks for real-time trusted execution on COTS processors to improve task set schedulability. We extensively assess the pros and cons of our proposed approaches in comparison to the state-of-the-art techniques in custom-built real-world hardware for feasibility, and simulated environments to test our solutions' scalability. / Doctor of Philosophy / Today's real-world problems demand real-time solutions. These solutions need to be practically feasible, and scale well with increasing end user demands. They also need to maintain a balance between system performance and predictability, while achieving minimum energy consumption. A recent example of technological design problem involves ways to improve the battery lifetime of mobile embedded devices, for example, smartphones, while still achieving the required performance objectives. For instance, smartphones that run Android OS has the capability to run multiple applications concurrently using a newly introduced split-screen mode of execution, where applications can run side-by-side at the same time on screen while using the same shared resources (e.g., CPU, memory bandwidth, peripheral devices etc.). While this can improve the overall performance of the system, it can also lead to increased energy consumption, thereby directly affecting the battery life.
Another technological design problem involves ways to protect confidential proprietary information from being siphoned out of devices by external attackers. Let us consider a surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as an example. The UAV must perform sensitive tasks, such as obtaining coordinates of interest for surveillance, within a given time duration, also known as task deadline. However, an attacker may learn how the UAV communicates with ground control, and take control of the UAV, along with the sensitive information it carries. Therefore, it is crucial to protect such sensitive information from access by an unauthorized party, while maintaining the system's task deadlines.
In this dissertation, we explore these two real-world design problems in depth, observe the challenges associated with them, while presenting several solutions to tackle the issues. We extensively assess the pros and cons of our proposed approaches in comparison to the state-of- the-art techniques in custom-built real-world hardware, and simulated environments to test our solutions' scalability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/95472 |
| Date | 08 November 2019 |
| Creators | Mukherjee, Anway |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chantem, Thidapat, Gerdes, Ryan M., Yu, Guoqiang, Clancy, Thomas Charles III, Tilevich, Eli |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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