Call for papers: "Critical and Real-Time Embedded Systems"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Embedded Systems.

Critical and real-time embedded systems integrate the modelling, design and analysis of hardware, software and communication systems that are deeply integrated with physical processes and with strict time and other requirements. These systems have special features that make them different to regular computer systems, i.e. (1) they are closely integrated to physical systems; (2) software is normally embedded in hardware with limited resources; (3) the system is distributed and in large scale; (4) they must be adaptable and reconfigurable; (5) and must be dependable, secure and reliable.

Some critical embedded systems have even more strict constraints of resources and reliability, e.g. systems used in operating rooms for surgeries assisted by robots, and those used for the controlling of electric power grids (smart grids) and unmanned vehicles. The development of such systems that have these features, mainly through fact of being in large scale and through the necessity of adaptability and reliability, is the main challenge of this special issue.

In special cases, embedded systems are formed by a huge amount of devices requiring computational power and, consequently, higher complexity. It is not rare to find different applications being executed by the same embedded system. Modelling, simulation and verification of such systems demand methods and tools that allow them to take place in an efficient and practical way. The necessary computational power is sometimes huge and scales quickly; thus distributed computing might be necessary in order to create an environment with high-performance execution of large-scale and heterogeneous models.

In addition, critcal and real-time embedded systems are required to be dependable, secure, reliable, adaptable and reconfigurable. Adaptability is a key feature, as it permits the system to have its own configuration to bring more security, reliability and dependability. One special case of such systems is autonomous computing systems, i.e. systems able to self-manage features to provide adaptation and awareness. Modelling and simulation are among the research challenges bound to these systems.

Being reliable and fault-tolerant is another feature common to critical and real-time systems that could be listed as another challenge of this project. A system is considered to be fault-tolerant if it does not fail despite the presence of faults. The most common way to have a fault-tolerant system is by adding redundancy that can be achieved at hardware, software and network levels.

The main focus of this special issue is to discuss and present the state of the art concerning practices and tools for the development of adaptable and reliable systems ready to be embedded into critical and real-time systems.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the III Brazilian Symposium on Computer Systems Engineering (SBESC 2013), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Modelling, design and simulation of critical and real-time systems
• Embedded systems in critical and real-time systems
• Networks, protocols and communication related to critical and real-time systems
• Distributed computing for support to critical and real-time systems
• Adaptable and reconfigurable systems and architectures in critical and real-time systems
• Fault tolerance in critical and real-time systems
• Harvesting energy and power consuption techniques in critical and real-time systems
• Applications: smart grids, smart cities, robotics, unmanned vehicles, etc.
• Autonomous computing systems in critical and real-time systems

Important Dates
Submission deadline: 8 January, 2014
Review results: 8 March, 2014
Final versions due: 8 May, 2014