A reliability evaluation of a group membership protocol

Abstract

We present a reliability evaluation of a group membership protocol (GMP), by computing the probability of violating the fault assumptions made in its proof. The evaluation of the reliability of a GMP is of paramount importance because group membership services are often used as building blocks in the design of fault-tolerant applications. The GMP that we consider here has been proposed for dual scheduled TDMA networks such as FlexRay, a protocol that is likely to become the de-facto standard for next generation automotive networks. Our study is carried out by modeling the GMP with discrete-time Markov chains. The models consider different fault scenarios, including permanent, transient and common-mode faults, affecting both channels and nodes. Furthermore we perform a sensitivity analysis to assess the influence of different parameters on the protocol's reliability. The results show that the GMP can achieve reliability levels in the range required for safety critical applications.