Architectural patterns to design software safety based safety-critical systems

Abstract

Safety-critical systems are embedded systems that may cause injury, loss of human life or great damage to the property if they fail. Architectural Patterns give solutions to the commonly recurring design problems in different applications and help the designers and architects to choose suitable design solutions. In this paper different architectural patterns for safety critical systems are presented and their advantages and limitations are discussed. Different architectural patterns presented in this paper are N-Version programming, protected single channel and dual channel patterns, TMR pattern, Monitor-Actuator and watch dog pattern. A safety critical Microcontroller based Four Fingered Robotic hand is designed and software safety issues are discussed.