Supporting fine-grained configurability with multiple quality of service properties in middleware for embedded systems

• Authors: Archibald David Mckinnon;David E. Bakken
• Venue: Supporting fine-grained configurability with multiple quality of service properties in middleware for embedded systems
• Year: 2003

The majority of microprocessors manufactured in recent years have been deployed in embedded systems, often with real-time (timeliness) requirements, and increasingly they are being networked. Middleware frameworks offer many advantages to distributed systems designers and application programmers. However, there are very few middleware frameworks that are suitable for the low end of the embedded systems market, and they are only coarsely configurable. Furthermore, even fewer middleware frameworks of any size support multiple Quality of Service properties, such as fault tolerance, security, and timeliness. In this dissertation we describe the design and implementation of MicroQoSCORBA. It represents a fundamental, bottom-up rethinking of what middleware can and should support for resource-constrained devices. This framework can be tailored, with a fine degree of granularity, to support both device and application program constraints. This dissertation describes the refined middleware architectural taxonomy that was developed to specify and implement these constraints and the multiple Quality of Service domains that MicroQoSCORBA supports. In particular, MicroQoSCORBA's security subsystem and its implemented security mechanisms are presented along with an analysis of security requirements from an embedded systems middleware perspective. This dissertation also presents an evaluation of our working middleware framework. The evaluation results illustrate the need to balance tradeoffs between application design, hardware resource constraints, and desired levels of multiple Quality of Service constraints.