SCA extensions to support safety critical distributed embedded systems

Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is being increasingly applied in the distributed embedded systems (DES) domain as long as these systems are getting more and more complex in terms of flexibility, dynamism or heterogeneity. Besides that, safety critical systems must cope with the fulfillment of safety requirements and certification standards. This factor increases considerably the development cost of safety distributed embedded systems, even more if they must cope with flexibility, dynamism and heterogeneity. This paper focuses on the distribution aspects of such systems, and more specifically on safe communication channels for safety critical distributed systems. The proposed approach describes a certifiable general purpose safety communication layer that could be reused in different systems, thereby reducing the cost of system development and certification.