Design and validation of a distributed industrial control system's nodes

The Fault Tolerant Systems Group (GSTF) of the Technical University of Valencia has developed the DICOS (Distributed Industrial COntrol System) system. The architecture of DICOS nodes and the error detection mechanisms used are presented. These mechanisms are based on the built-in capabilities of the microcontroller used, control flow checking with the aid of a second microcontroller and double execution of tasks. In order to validate the error detection mechanisms, a software fault injector (SOFI-SOftware Fault Injector) has been developed to obtain the error coverage and latency times. In this paper SOFI is presented, showing its primary features and results of different fault injection campaigns.