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Simulation is essential for embedded control systems with task jitter

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Abstract

Sampling or task jitter affects the performance of digital control systems but realistic simulation of this effect has not been possible to date. Our previous work has developed a novel method to simulate sampling jitter in MATLAB/Simulink simulation software where the jitter is generated randomly. What has been missing is a way to capture sampling jitter from a target platform and then feed this timing information into the simulation. This paper presents a low-cost and novel solution to these problems. The method uses an Arduino board to capture task jitter from two different hardware platforms with multiple stressing conditions. Then the recorded performance data is used to drive realistic simulations of a control system. Measurement shows that the task jitter data does not follow any specific random distribution such as Gaussian or Uniform. Furthermore, very occasional timing patterns, which may not be picked up while testing a real system, can result in extreme controller responses. This novel method allows comparisons of different platforms and reduces the effort required to choose the most appropriate platform for full implementation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Eugine Tomson Palatty, Master student in Electronic Engineering, RMIT University for his contribution in testing multiple hardware platforms performance using stress-ng library.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, HCMC University of Technology and Education, 1 Vo Van Ngan street, Thu Duc district, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Long Tran

  2. School of Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    P J Radcliffe & Liuping Wang

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  1. Long Tran
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  2. P J Radcliffe
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  3. Liuping Wang
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Correspondence to Long Tran.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 Statistic result of the Arduino for measurement of several frequency signal
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Tran, L., Radcliffe, P.J. & Wang, L. Simulation is essential for embedded control systems with task jitter. Des Autom Embed Syst 25, 177–191 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10617-021-09248-8

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