Comparison of Enhanced Markov Models and Discrete Event Simulation: For Evaluation of Probabilistic Faults in Safety-Critical Real-Time Task Sets

In this paper we present simulation and model based approaches for evaluating and validating the temporal and safety relevant properties of software intensive safety-critical real-time embedded systems. A high level reliability model of a safe task execution is described by a continuous-time Markov process, enhanced by the modeling of execution times. It is shown that the behavior - regarding real-time and safety metrics - of this theoretical model can be transferred into an abstract system timing model, which then can be analyzed by a discrete event simulation approach. The verification of the discrete event simulation by Markov models offers the possibility of a holistic approach for reliability analysis combined with schedulability analysis of complex safety-critical multicore real-time systems by the discrete event simulation.