Robust design of embedded systems

This paper presents a methodology to evaluate and optimize the robustness of an embedded system in terms of invariability in case of design revisions. Early decisions in embedded system design may be revised in later stages resulting in additional costs. A method that quantifies the expected additional costs as the robustness value is proposed. Since the determination of the robustness based on arbitrary revisions is computationally expensive, an efficient set-based approach that uses a symbolic encoding as Binary Decision Diagrams is presented. Moreover, a methodology for the integration of the optimization of the robustness into a design space exploration is proposed. Based on an external archive that accepts also near-optimal solutions, this robustness-aware optimization is efficient since it does not require additional function evaluations as previous approaches. Two realistic case studies give evidence of the benefits of the proposed approach.