Vision
The quantity of very small embedded wireless systems rapidly increases in the area of “internet of things” and industry 4.0. Typically for such a system is a platform built up of low cost components and resources, regarding processing power, memory and energy, are restricted. Furthermore the systems are application-specific which causes heterogeneous system architecture.

For economic reasons a simple, fast and cost-efficient design is necessary, but the requirements for reliability and persistence are existing. Otherwise it would not be possible to minimize maintenance cost. Additionally, the evolutionary development in the field of distributed devices is an important item. These requirements are partly in conflict to each other and require innovative methods and solutions already during the evelopment process of these systems.

Objectives
The scientific work of the DIAMANT project focuses on the simplification of software development processes regarding distributed embedded systems with a long lifetime. At the same time DIAMANT seeks to improve reliability, energy efficiency and maintenance of those systems at all levels. Thus, methods will not only be explored, but also new methods should be developed which can be applied on resource-restricted platforms.

In the context of increasing heterogeneity regarding system architecture and application areas , scientific research issues deal with the following aspects:

  • Fault Tolerance
    Especially for resource-restricted embedded systems innovative fault tolerance techniques have to be developed at architecture and protocol level, so that permanent hardware faults and temporary faults during communication can be fixed. Realized results do not only have impact on sensor networks, but also on other embedded systems.
  • Energy Efficiency
    In order to improve energy consumption innovative solutions at hardware and protocol level will be investigated and compared to existing solutions.
  • Maintanence
    In order to minimize the effort of maintenance and to achieve a higher reliability, the developed architecture and protocols are the basis for maintenance and diagnostic functions for distributed systems.
  • Cross Platform
    For protocol and application level the software development for heterogeneous systems will be simplified by a standardized API. So, the porting of protocol and application implementations are faster and more efficient.
  • Transfer
    To promote and enhance the awareness of Brandenburg as innovative hightech region, the acquired know-how shall be transfered to the regional economy and young researchers.