Design and Simulation of a Dependable Architecture Using Triple Modular Redundancy for Embedded Cyber-Physical Systems

Jul 6, 2026

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Fault-tolerant and dependable digital systems support safety-critical cyber-physical systems (CPSs) across domains such as healthcare instrumentation, aerospace, smart cities, and military applications. CPSs integrate embedded hardware, specialized software, algorithms, and computation-based models linking computational and physical components. The paper designs, models, and simulates a reliable and secure microcontroller-based hardware architecture using heterogeneous design ideas, state-machine modeling, fault-tolerance, and defense-in-depth. A sensing, processing, and actuating pipeline monitors physical quantities like temperature, water, and gas, and simulation results show resilient TMR reliability with high robustness under multiple failure-rate assumptions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

Introduction

Reliable and Embedded Cyber‑Physical Systems

Fault‑Tolerance Techniques in Embedded Cyber‑Physical Systems

The Main Contribution and Outline

Journal of Electronic Testing (2025) 41:63–74 [https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-025-06159-5](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-025-06159-5) Design and Simulation of a Dependable Architecture Using Triple Modular Redundancy for Embedded Cyber‑Physical Systems HamedA. Mahmood1 · Shawkat S. Khairullah1 Received: 20 July 2024 / Accepted: 29 January 2025 / Published online: 13 February 2025 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025 Abstract Fault-tolerance and dependable digital systems are now used in a diverse set of safety critical and cyber physical systems (CPSs) applications like healthcare instrumentation and control (I&C) devices, aerospace, smart cities, and military systems. The architectural design principles required for achieving dependability in these systems vary as much as the safety-critical CPS system formal requirements and specifications. CPSs are composed of embedded hardware, specialized software, algorithms, and computation-based models interconnected to integrate computational and physical components. In this paper, we present the design, modeling and simulation of a reliable and secure microcontroller-based hardware architecture using a heterogenous design approach that combines concepts from computer-based architectural system design, state machine diagram, and traditional fault-tolerance, and defense in depth techniques. The proposed dependable architecture consists of a variety of software and hardware components: a sensing unit, a processing unit, and an actuating unit, interconnected to monitor the status of different physical quantities such as temperature, water and gas physical quantities. The simulation-based experimental results demonstrate the resilient operation of the proposed fault-tolerant hardware CPS system that achieves the highest reliability 0.999833345 with the failure-rate 0.03 failure per hour at the time equal to 15 min and how it is used in executing safety and security tasks. The reliability level of the TMR system remains high in the three different failure rate assumptions and is not less than 0.98. Consequently, we think that using such fault tolerant hardware architectures with the failure rate 0.03 failure per hour in embedded systems will lead to strengthen the reliability of next generation smart-home CPS applications. Keywords Fault-tolerance · Embedded · Dependability · Reliable · Architecture · Cyber-physical-system 1 Introduction Cyber physical systems (CPSs) consist of a multitude of sensors, actuators, software programming models and hardware architectural components. These computer-based systems have been entrusted over the past few years with safety-critical applications that require high levels of dependability and robustness [1] . The use of fault-tolerance and model checking techniques embedded in digital system components sufficiently reduce the probability of safety-critical CPS failure [2] . The introduction section will discuss the Responsible Editor: S. Demidenko * Shawkat S. Khairullah [shawkat.sabah@uomosul.edu.iq](shawkat.sabah@uomosul.edu.iq) 1 Department of Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq basic principles required in the design, analysis, modeling and simulation of dependable hardware architectures targeting the next generation embedded CPS systems. These principles are fault-tolerant, digital, and embedded system design, verification-based model checking and traditional fault-tolerant models of defense in depth. 1.1 Reliable and Embedded Cyber‑Physical Systems In recent years, reliable and embedded cyber-physical systems (CPSs) have become prevalent in the design of resilient, safe, and secure-critical applications such as automotive industry, avionics, internet of things (IoTs)-based medical devices, smart home systems and smart city applications [3, 4] . Figure 1 presents the abstract model required for the rea

FAQs

What architecture does the paper propose for embedded CPSs?

It proposes a microcontroller-based dependable hardware architecture with sensing, processing, and actuating units interconnected to monitor physical quantities and support fault-tolerant operation.

How is fault tolerance implemented in the proposed CPS design?

Fault tolerance is carried out using error detection, fault processing, and removing fault effects before service failure, combined with state-machine modeling and defense-in-depth concepts.

What reliability performance does the TMR system achieve in the simulation results?

Simulation-based experiments demonstrate resilient operation, reporting a highest reliability of 0.999833345 and a failure rate of 0.03 failures per hour at 15 minutes; reliability remains high (not less than 0.98) under three different failure-rate assumptions.

Jul 6, 2026

Upload by Miles