SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF DETERMINISM IN NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS IN EMBEDDED COMPUTER SYSTEMS OF AEROSPACE VEHICLES

Computer systems aboard aerospace vehicles have become more and more distributed in an attempt to solve “real-life” problems such as commonality and longevity of components and subsystems. On the other hand, distributed systems pose a much bigger challenge in system design than traditional, “monolithic” systems, whereby functions are performed by a single component combining hardware and software. “Determinism” (predictability in the occurrence of events), “causality” (temporal ordination of occurrence of events) and “synchronism” (simultaneousness in the occurrence of events) can be pointed out as major challenges in system design. This paper shall survey methods of analyzing determinism in network communications in distributed computer systems aboard aerospace vehicles in different network topologies using a representative model. Analysis using Network Calculus principles, traditional agendability analysis principles and time-division techniques among others shall be performed and results obtained shall be compared, followed by conclusions on suitability of each method..