Experimental Analysis of FreeRTOS Dependability through Targeted Fault Injection Campaigns

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Mannella, Luca, Di Carlo, Stefano, Savino, Alessandro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Mannella, Luca
Di Carlo, Stefano
Savino, Alessandro
author_facet Mannella, Luca
Di Carlo, Stefano
Savino, Alessandro
contents Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOSes) play a crucial role in safety-critical domains, where deterministic and predictable task execution is essential. Yet they are increasingly exposed to ionizing radiation, which can compromise system dependability. To assess FreeRTOS under such conditions, we introduce KRONOS, a software-based, non-intrusive post-propagation Fault Injection (FI) framework that injects transient and permanent faults into Operating System-visible kernel data structures without specialized hardware or debug interfaces. Using KRONOS, we conduct an extensive FI campaign on core FreeRTOS kernel components, including scheduler-related variables and Task Control Blocks (TCBs), characterizing the impact of kernel-level corruptions on functional correctness, timing behavior, and availability. The results show that corruption of pointer and key scheduler-related variables frequently leads to crashes, whereas many TCB fields have only a limited impact on system availability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25666
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Experimental Analysis of FreeRTOS Dependability through Targeted Fault Injection Campaigns
Mannella, Luca
Di Carlo, Stefano
Savino, Alessandro
Operating Systems
Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOSes) play a crucial role in safety-critical domains, where deterministic and predictable task execution is essential. Yet they are increasingly exposed to ionizing radiation, which can compromise system dependability. To assess FreeRTOS under such conditions, we introduce KRONOS, a software-based, non-intrusive post-propagation Fault Injection (FI) framework that injects transient and permanent faults into Operating System-visible kernel data structures without specialized hardware or debug interfaces. Using KRONOS, we conduct an extensive FI campaign on core FreeRTOS kernel components, including scheduler-related variables and Task Control Blocks (TCBs), characterizing the impact of kernel-level corruptions on functional correctness, timing behavior, and availability. The results show that corruption of pointer and key scheduler-related variables frequently leads to crashes, whereas many TCB fields have only a limited impact on system availability.
title Experimental Analysis of FreeRTOS Dependability through Targeted Fault Injection Campaigns
topic Operating Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25666