CORBA-based Middleware for the CAN

Abstract

There is a growing demand for distributed computer control in sophisticated embedded control systems such as high-end passenger vehicles, numerical control machines, and avionics fly-by-wire systems. These systems are often equipped with tens of microcontrollers, which oversee diverse functional units connecting hundreds, sometimes thousands, of analog and digital sensors and actuators. There are significant merits in designing such complex embedded control systems in a distributed fashion. First, it is more cost effective to build an embedded control system with several customized, inexpensive microcontrollers than to do so with a single high performance microprocessor. Second, a distributed embedded control system is more reliable than a centralized one since it is possible to isolate the breakdown of one subsystem from others in a distributed control system. fortunately, such benefits come with a serious cost — increased software complexity. This makes software systems in a distributed embedded control system get extremely complicated to handle the added complexity as well as inherent one. Note that embedded control software must operate in a harsh environment, run on a wide variety of microcontrollers, and interface with heterogeneous I/O devices. Thus, it is very difficult, though not impossible, to design a distributed embedded control system without supports from real-time operating systems, well-defined network protocols, and component-based middleware systems.