Supporting dynamic update and resource protection in an embedded operating system

• DOI: 10.1145/1982185.1982316
• Publication Date: 2011-05-17T12:59:14Z
• Authors: Mei-Ling Chiang; Hsiang-Yu Hsu
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology

Dynamic update provides more flexibility in the development of embedded systems since it allows embedded systems to update their components on-the-fly without rebooting or stopping system services. However, downloading an incautiously developed component may corrupt the system. In this paper, we have implemented a platform which supports a dynamic update dissemination mechanism for upgrading an embedded operating system without rebooting the whole systems. Besides, a resource protection mechanism is implemented to protect system resources. If an error component has misused resources, the wasted resources will be reclaimed and it will be removed out of our embedded client. Currently, our system can reclaim lost memory space, ensure normal execution of critical sections, and prevent null pointer access. Experimental results demonstrate that our platform can effectively provide dynamic update and resource protection with little overhead.