Highly reliable controller implementation using a network-based fully reconfigurable FPGA for industrial applications

Fault-Tolerance is currently a very important feature in industrial automation. This paper focuses on Fault-Tolerant FPGA-based controllers for Sensor-to-Actuator Networked Control Systems. A design is proposed that takes advantage of the Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration property inherent in some FPGAs. The controller is assumed to consist of a small processor, memory and associated hardware. Several Fault-Tolerance techniques are applied to this generic system and single points of failure are avoided even in the error detection and recovery mechanisms. The fault model considered is single and/or some multiple event upsets. A case study is presented to quantify the increase in reliability of the presented system. Furthermore, the proposed architecture can support FPGA full configuration as well as partial reconfiguration over TCP/IP networks through on-chip configuration network interface with minimal off-chip components.