Developing Reliable Embedded Systems

The majority of the design examples presented on this website involve the development of safety-related and safety-critical embedded systems.

Some projects that we contribute to are not safety related, but system reliability is key design consideration.

• Our technology is used (for example) in the space sector, for deep-sea monitoring and for animal tracking; in these systems, there are no direct safety implications, but the cost of system recovery / repair would be prohibitive.
• In other application areas (for example, sports equipment) there are – again – no safety implications, but our technology is used in order to reduce the risks of reputational (business) damage that would result from a product that fails to operate correctly at all times.

As an example of the type of design solution that we employ in such products, we explore (briefly) the design of a space-based system on this page.

[This page was last updated 2018-05-01]

Space-based electronics

In the space sector our technology is currently used in ‘payloads’ (rather than – for example – control of the launch vehicle).

In such designs, the benefit obtained through use of a TT architecture is that the behaviour is highly deterministic, and it is therefore possible to detect even very small changes that may indicate an incipient failure. In these circumstances, a controlled reset can be performed.

This makes sense in many space-based systems because – when a discrepancy is detected at run time – the root cause of problems may be a form of transitory, radiation-linked, ‘single event upset’ (SEU): in these circumstances, a carefully-controlled reset (at the correct time) can be expected to address the problem.

The figure below illustrates – schematically – the use of a DuplicaTTor software platform with two microcontrollers (MCUs) in a space-based design that could be used to achieve this goal.

Complete your cost-effective high-reliability design successfully using a SafeTTy Solutions™ package

The design example presented on this page is based on a SafeTTy Solutions™ Package (SSP-RTL0).

SafeTTy Solutions Packages are based on TT designs and include carefully-selected combinations of our various products and services.

SafeTTy Solutions Packages include an appropriate ReliabiliTTy® Technology Licence.

Learn more about SafeTTy Solutions Packages …