A Framework for Scalable Analysis and Design of System-wide Graceful Degradation in Distributed Embedded Systems

We present a framework that will enable scalable analysis and design of graceful degradation in distributed embedded systems. We define graceful degradation in terms of utility. A system that gracefully degrades suffers a proportional loss of system utility as individual software and hardware components fail. However, explicitly designing a system to gracefully degrade; i.e. handle all possible combinations of component failures, becomes impractical for systems with more than a few components. We avoid this exponential complexity of component combinations by exploiting the structure of the system architecture to partition components into subsystems. We view each subsystem as a configuration of components that changes when components are removed or added. Thus, a subsystem's utility changes when components fail or are repaired. We then view the system as a composition of subsystems that each contribute to overall system utility. We demonstrate the scalability of our framework by a...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: WORDS
• Authors: Charles P. Shelton, Philip Koopman, William Nace
• Keywords: Graceful Degradation, Hardware Components, Subsystem's Utility Changes, WORDS 2003