A Realistic Approach to a Network-on-Chip Cross-Domain Pattern.

The transition from conventional federated architectures to integrated architectures enables the integration of functionalities with different criticality (such as safety, security and real-time) on a single embedded computing platform. Many embedded systems require distributed subsystems with networks (e.g., EtherCAT or Ethernet) to satisfy computational resource demands and installation requirements and ensure fault-tolerance. The broad trend of the integration of functionalities with different criticality on a single embedded computing platform involves the implementation of safe and predictable communication systems with temporal segregation between different criticality. However, they represent challenges of certification such as the guarantee of non-interference between safety-critical and non-safety-critical communications, which leads to the increase of engineering and certification cost. This paper contributes a network-on-chip cross-domain pattern which provides a generic solution to recurring problems in mixed-criticality networks. In addition, this paper presents a modular safety case for an IEC 61508 compliant mixed-criticality network that is used for defining the linking analysis of the proposed network pattern. On the other hand, this paper also defines the integration of the cross-domain pattern on a simplified wind turbine case study.