Distributed Safety Architecture for OSEK Control Units

This paper presents a distributed software architecture for safety-related embedded systems in modern automobiles. The safety architecture ensures that software and hardware faults are treated correctly and consistently by a distributed system that consists of various control units connected by a bus. This is especially important for safety-related vehicle applications.

The general design of the architecture as well as its concrete implementation will be described. It will be shown how the abilities of the OSEK operating system and its standardized components are used to seamlessly integrate distributed control units in such a way that the behavior of the different individual control units ensures the safety of the vehicle.