Safety-critical Control in MixedCriticality Embedded Systems : A Study on Mixed Criticality in the AutomotiveIndustry

Abstract: Modern automotive systems contain a large number of Electronic Control Units, each controlling a specific system of a specific criticality level. To increase efficiency it is desired to combine multiple applications into fewer ECUs, leading to mixed criticality embedded systems. The assurance of safety critical applications not being affected by non-critical applications on the same system is crucial. A system for vehicle platooning is implemented on a platform hosting systems of mixed criticality where safety-critical systems are separated from noncritical systems via the hypervisor SafeG. The hypervisor added an overhead of 0.6% and increased useful system utilization from 0.005% to potentially 99.4%. The hypervisor showed good isolation properties and the non-critical systems could fail without affecting the safety-critical systems.