Comparing Communication Paradigms in Cause-Effect Chains

• Published in: IEEE transactions on computers Vol. 72; no. 1; pp. 82 - 96
• Main Authors: Tang, Yue, Jiang, Xu, Guan, Nan, Ji, Dong, Luo, Xiantong, Yi, Wang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.01.2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Cause-effect chains; Chains; communication paradigms; end-to-end latency; priority assignment; Protocols; Real-time systems; Safety critical; Semantics; Task analysis; Time factors; Timing; Upper bound
• ISSN: 0018-9340; 1557-9956
• DOI: 10.1109/TC.2022.3197082

A cause-effect chain is a sequence of multi-rate real-time tasks with data dependency. Cause-effect chains are generally subject to end-to-end timing constraints, especially in safety-critical systems. Communication paradigms greatly affect the end-to-end latency of cause-effect chains. This paper compares different communication paradigms (implicit communication, LET, DBP) with regards to the end-to-end latency of cause-effect chains using them, and proposes priority assignment strategies to optimize the end-to-end latency with specific communication paradigm. Experiments with synthesized data based on an automotive benchmark and randomly generated parameters are conducted to evaluate our results.