Research Of On-board Software Maintenance Technology For Embedded System

With the development of computer technology and software technology, the application of real-time embedded system with high autonomy and flexibility is more and more extensive in areas of spacecraft, navigation, communication, network infrastructure, and so on. In order to assure those system's performance and reliability during their long-life missions, research on on-board software maintenance for real-time system is particularly significant.The thesis proposes the architecture of an on-board software maintenance system, which adapts itself to the requirement of on-board software maintenance for real-time embedded system. Then, the key technologies of automatic creation of maintenance patch and software dynamic modification are researched and implemented.At first, a systematic survey of research in the domain of on-board software maintenance is given, including the concept and requirement of on-board software maintenance, and the research status quo and tendency of on-board software maintenance technology. Then, the study objectives and contents of this thesis are presented.Secondly, the thesis proposes the architecture of the on-board software maintenance system. According to the different functions, the whole system is divided into three subsystems: software development station, patch processing station and objective machine.Thirdly, the key technology of automatic creation of maintenance patch is researched. The thesis designs the software development subsystem to automatic analyze the software sources and create the initial maintenance patches, then use the patch processing subsystem to automatic process the patches. On the basis of the combination of the two systems' function, the automatic creation of complete patch is reached.Fourthly, the key technology of software dynamic modification is researched. The relationship between the dynamic modification subsystem and the other parts in objective system is discussed. Then the implementation of dynamic modification by means of maintenance patches is presented.Fifthly, a practical system application is shown as the example, as well as several maintenance simulations.Finally, this thesis makes a conclusion about the on-board software maintenance system and its development tendency in the future.