A Novel Approach to Minimizing the Risks of Soft Errors in Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems

Abstract

A novel approach to minimizing the risks of soft errors at modelling level of mobile and ubiquitous systems is outlined. From a pure dependability viewpoint, critical components, whose failure is likely to impact on system functionality, attract more attention of protection/prevention mechanisms (against soft errors) than others do. Tolerating soft errors can be much improved if critical components can be identified at an early design phase and measures are taken to lower their criticalities at that stage. This improvement is achieved by presenting a criticality ranking (among the components) formed by combining a prediction of soft errors, consequences of them, and a propagation of failures at system modelling phase; and pointing out the ways to apply changes in the model to minimize the risks of degradation of desired functionalities. Case study results are given to illustrate and validate the approach.