Modelling and Synthesis of Safety-critical Software with IEC 61499
type: CreativeWork
description: Software forms a central part of modern industrial control systems. It is routinely used, nowadays, to control a variety of physical processes through an integration of computing elements with sensors and actuators. The falling cost of digital electronics have also led to an increasing use of multiple computing units to control large distributed systems in a networked environment. The design of such systems is complex, and requires programming methodologies that seamlessly support the specification of distributed and concurrent software. The methodologies should further be easy to understand, and should provide design artefacts that naturally support reuse. Most existing techniques for developing control software, however, are unable to support these features. Recognizing this need, the IEC 61499 standard has been proposed as a standard for developing distributed industrial control systems. This standard prescribes a component-oriented approach for developing distributed control software, based on function blocks. The graphical nature and the encapsulation offered by function blocks provide an intuitive way to describe software in a reusable manner. Executable code can further be automatically synthesized from these function blocks. This helps to simplify the task of programming, while ensuring more reliable software. The standard, however, lacks the semantic rigour necessary for the automated verification and unambiguous execution of function blocks. In particular, the model of concurrency for a network of function blocks running in a centralized or distributed fashion is not clear. Several scheduling techniques have been proposed to overcome this problem. Various run-time environments, each adhering to a particular scheduling policy, have correspondingly been developed to execute function blocks. This has resulted in incompatible behaviours, as well as complications in the formal verification of function block programs. This thesis addresses these problems by prop…
abstract: Software forms a central part of modern industrial control systems. It is routinely used, nowadays, to control a variety of physical processes through an integration of computing elements with sensors and actuators. The falling cost of digital electronics have also led to an increasing use of multiple computing units to control large distributed systems in a networked environment. The design of such systems is complex, and requires programming methodologies that seamlessly support the specification of distributed and concurrent software. The methodologies should further be easy to understand, and should provide design artefacts that naturally support reuse. Most existing techniques for developing control software, however, are unable to support these features. Recognizing this need, the IEC 61499 standard has been proposed as a standard for developing distributed industrial control systems. This standard prescribes a component-oriented approach for developing distributed control software, based on function blocks. The graphical nature and the encapsulation offered by function blocks provide an intuitive way to describe software in a reusable manner. Executable code can further be automatically synthesized from these function blocks. This helps to simplify the task of programming, while ensuring more reliable software. The standard, however, lacks the semantic rigour necessary for the automated verification and unambiguous execution of function blocks. In particular, the model of concurrency for a network of function blocks running in a centralized or distributed fashion is not clear. Several scheduling techniques have been proposed to overcome this problem. Various run-time environments, each adhering to a particular scheduling policy, have correspondingly been developed to execute function blocks. This has resulted in incompatible behaviours, as well as complications in the formal verification of function block programs. This thesis addresses these problems by prop…
author: Yoong, Li
license: https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm
date published: 2010
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:06:29Z
provider: University of Auckland
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: ResearchSpace@Auckland

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2292/6691