On Reconfiguration Theory of Discrete-Event Systems: From Initial Specification Until Final Deployment

Abstract

This paper presents an overview on different research activities that we did in the recent decade for developing reconfigurable discrete-event systems (RDESs) from initial high-level specification according to user requirements until final low-level deployment in target hardware components. A reconfiguration is any run-time scenario that adapts the system's behavior to any evolution in the related environment by adding or removing services or also configuring their parameters, i.e., their frequency, execution time, or also their location in the considered hardware architecture. Since the development of distributed RDESs under functional and extra-functional constraints is required by experts, we propose a complete methodology that deals first with their initial design with a new general profile named R-UML extending unified modeling language (UML) or also with new specific technology-oriented profiles, the validation of the related models with a new language R-OCL extending object constraint language (OCL), before their transformation to formal formalisms, such as Petri nets, timed automata, or B method for simulation or also formal verification of different properties. The checked models are transformed into OS reconfigurable tasks in the operational level, before applying a co-design methodology under functional, real-time, memory, and energy constraints for minimizing redundancies in tasks and for optimizing the composition of software and hardware parts together. We describe technology-oriented solutions for the scheduling of distributed RDESs by parameterizing tasks and their exchanged messages between multi-speed networked processors. We finish with the real low-level deployment on target hardware devices before applying useful software and hardware tests for checking the delivered system quality. These contributions, published in different journal and conference papers, are applied to different applications in medicine, wireless sensor networks, transportation systems, manufacturing industry, smart grids and microgrids, embedded technologies, and so on. We find significant gains in terms of the system reactivity and flexibility under related constraints. INDEX TERMS Discrete-event system, modeling and verification, design and validation, implementation and scheduling, real-time and energy aware scheduling, test and simulation, co-design and deployment, application. I. INTRODUCTION Automatic flexibility becomes a required criterion for dynamic system adaptability to any possible evolution in related environment. A reconfigurable system is considered in this paper as a discrete-event system (RDES) that adapts its behavior to recover faults or also improve required performance at run-time. It is a set of wired/wireless networked devices that run independent/dependent control software tasks exchanging messages on the network [1], [2]. These tasks and consequently the related messages should be executed under functional, memory, real-time, and energy constraints described in user requirements [3]-[5]. A reconfi...

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