Startup and Recovery of Fault-Tolerant Time-Triggered Communication: With a Focus on Bus-Based and Switch-Based Network Topologies

Computer systems are becoming more and more interesting for ultra-high dependable applications as for example flight control systems, where they replace and supplement traditional hydraulic or mechanical mechanisms. Such computer systems inherently require a distributed solution in order that the corruption of a part of the system does not cause the system to fail as a whole. The spatial distribution, however, implies the implementation of a communication infrastructure, such that the participants in the system are able to exchange information. For economic reasons the communication infrastructure is often realized as a shared resource and dedicated communication protocols have to be implemented to coordinate its usage. Such a communication protocol can be based on the synchronization of local clocks of the participants. This thesis addresses the design of fault-tolerant algorithms for initial synchronizing the local clocks of the participants in the distributed system as well as for recovery procedures to re-gain synchronization once it is lost.

Wilfried Steiner received a Dipl.-Ing. and a Dr.techn. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Vienna University of Technology. During his dissertational research he spent several months at SRI International in California as International Fellow. Dr. Steiner is an expert in algorithms and services that enable time-triggered communication.