Design philosophy for self-repair of electronic systems using the UML

As electronic systems are entrusted with increasing numbers of critical tasks, it becomes important that these systems exhibit high levels of reliability. The increasing complexity of modern systems, combined with reduced development times, makes the production of fault-free systems extremely difficult. Minimising the effects of such faults is a challenging task. Developing a self-repair capability for electronic systems would provide a means to alleviate the effects of a fault. This approach, inspired by healing in biological systems, offers the capability of repairing faults without user intervention. This paper describes a design methodology targeted at self-repairing systems based on modelling systems using the unified modelling language (UML). The approach increases the flexibility of systems by enabling the transfer of functionality between hardware and software. The system configuration is produced by an intelligent reasoning approach, capable of producing optimised configurations at the design stage, or to repair a fault. This design methodology is demonstrated on an example system and the challenges this presents are discussed.