Content: Today, Time-Triggered Ethernet (SAE AS6802) components support 100Mbit/sec and 1Gbit/sec data rates. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the possibilities to improve the data rate of Time-Triggered Ethernet to 10Gbit/sec and give an outlook on the possibilities for even higher data rates.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping
Content: Simulation can be used to evaluate the suitability of Time-Triggered Ethernet for given use cases. The topic of this thesis is to evaluate different simulation options. Some simulation modules of the Time-Triggered Ethernet technology already exist today and can be used as starting point of the thesis.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Simulation
Content: Ethernet is on its way to become the backbone of in-vehicle communication. Automotive Ethernet will be based on a collection of standards, e.g., IEEE 802.1 (AVB/TSN, TSN++), IEEE 802.3, and SAE AS6802. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate different network shaping concepts (e.g., credit-based shaping, urgency-based shaping, time-based shaping, preemption) in isolation as well as in combination with each other.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Simulation, Prototyping, Demo-Kit
Content: Ethernet is becoming the next major standard for in-vehicle communication. TTTech has developed and continues to develop standard products for the automotive communication market. This thesis will develop an evaluation platform that incorporates these standard products and demonstrates Automotive Ethernet in selected use cases from the automotive industry.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Demo-Kit
Content: Wireless communication is an attractive alternative to wired communication because of various reasons, e.g., flexibility and mobility. However, wireless links are inherently magnitudes of orders less reliable than wired connections. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to investigate novel approaches to improve various real-time and dependability properties of wireless communication.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototype, demo kit
Content: With the growing functionality in critical cyber-physical systems new paradigms for software integration need to be developed. Virtualization is a technique that is well understood and used on a daily basis in the IT. The objective of this thesis is to research the adoption of the virtualization principle in cyber-physical systems.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping, demo kit
Content: Modern cyber-physical systems implement a hierarchical structure of dependencies such that various scheduling entities need to be aligned to each other. For example, a typical structure will encompass task scheduling, virtual machine scheduling, and communication scheduling. The objective of this thesis is to investigate dynamic real-time scheduling solutions and find optimal scheduling strategies in such a system’s context.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Simulation, prototyping
Content: Re-use of existing SW code becomes a more and more relevant topic also for cyber-physical systems. Such SW that needs to be adapted could be either legacy code or code developed for other industries, e.g., the IT. The objective of this thesis is to develop a strategy and a prototype to seamlessly integrate existing SW code into a cyber-physical systems context.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping, demo kit
Content: TTTech develops HW/SW platforms for cyber-physical systems, such as for example the aerospace, space, automotive, off-highway or industrial automation markets. The selection of a specific Real-Time Operating System and adapting the RTOS for use in the platform requires significant engineering skill. The objective of this thesis is, therefore, to evaluate various RTOS for TTTech’s platforms.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping, Demo-Kit
Content: Time-Triggered Ethernet is a communication network for safety-critical systems. For example, Time-Triggered Ethernet is the network in NASA’s Orion space vehicle. The objective of this thesis is the development of a prototypical flight-controls system based on Time-Triggered Ethernet.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping, demo kit
Content: Time-triggered systems make use of a static schedule that defines the access patterns of processes to shared communication/computation resources. The production of such schedules is a non-trivial activity and an active field of research. The objective of this thesis is in the area of evaluation of new scheduling paradigms and, potentially, in the development of novel scheduling approaches.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping
Content: More and more cyber-physical systems integrate static and dynamic scheduling approaches. For example, Automotive Ethernet provides both, dynamic and unsynchronized traffic to be communicated over the same physical network as time-triggered traffic. Similarly, combined scheduling problems arise in processor scheduling. The objective of this thesis is to analyze existing integrated scheduling paradigms and, potentially, to further develop the scientific field of scheduling in this direction.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping
Content: The communication network is a core element in the overall electronics system on board an aircraft. Different communication networks have different characteristics and it is important to provide an abstract description of these characteristics. Such an abstract description can be used by system architects and decision makers in the selection process of a suitable network for a given purpose. The objective of this thesis is to develop an interface description for communication networks in the aerospace domain following aerospace-specific standards and development guidelines.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping
Content: The communication network is a core element in the overall electronics system of an automobile. Different communication networks have different characteristics and it is important to provide an abstract description of these characteristics. Such an abstract description can be used by system architects and decision makers in the selection process of a suitable network for a given purpose. The objective of this thesis is to develop an interface description for communication networks in the aerospace domain following automotive-specific standards and development guidelines.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Prototyping
Content: Software-defined networking (SDN) is a well-known concept from the IT industry and used for example in large data-centers. With the ascent of cyber-physical systems and their magnificent growth in their number of nodes, novel configuration and management structures are needed there, too. SDN is a candidate solution for this and it is the objective of this thesis to research the feasibility of SDN for cyber-physical systems.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Simulation, prototyping
Content: With the increase of connectivity of the automobiles to each other and to the infrastructure, security becomes more and more relevant also in the automotive area. The objective of this thesis is therefore to evaluate existing security concepts in the automotive domain and to, potentially, further develop such concepts.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Simulation, prototyping
Content: In IT, security measures are daily business. However, cyber-physical systems still need to develop a similar level of rigor of security methods and means. The objective of this thesis is to investigate existing IT security for their suitability as security solution for cyber-physical systems and, potentially, to develop adaption strategies.
Engineering/Scientific Method: Simulation, prototyping
The following types of engineering/scientific methods are recommended for the proposed topics, but are also matter of discussion and agreement with the student:
Simulation: simulation of the technology in a simulator as mutually agreed by the student and TTTech
Prototyping: prototyping of the technology, can be hardware, software or both
Demo-Kit: the work will largely be based on TTTech’s available components, improve and configure these components towards a demonstrator