An operating system infrastructure for remote code update in deeply embedded systems
Giovani Gracioli, Antônio Augusto Fröhlich · 2008
Deeply Embedded Systems are designed to perform a de-termined set of specific tasks, usually on low-cost, high-reliability platforms. In order to support on-site firmware up-dates, such systems are subject to severe resource limitation, like processing power, memory and energy, since the update mechanism itself must share the sparse resources with run-ning applications. This work presents a low-overhead oper-ating system infrastructure for remote code update. By using sophisticate C++ static metaprogramming techniques, the infrastructure and the code update become fully transparent to applications. Moreover, the infrastructure allows the sys-tem components to be marked as updatable or not at com-pilation time, and for those components that are not marked as updatable, no overhead is added. The infrastructure was implemented in EPOS, a multi-platform, component-based, embedded operating system [7], with positive preliminary results that show that the proposed strategy is a feasible so-lution for software update in deeply embedded systems. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.3 [Real-time sys-tems and embedded systems]; D.4.7 [Organization and