The Faculty of Applied Engineering has a new doctor! Dr. Haoxuan Li defended his doctoral thesis on the 22nd of April, with professor Paul De Meulenaere and professor Peter Hellinckx as promotors. The doctoral thesis is titled ‘Hybrid Timing Analysis Based on a Block-Isolation Technique’. 

Real-time embedded systems can be found easily in our daily lives. They are made to complete a simple function within a given time frame. For example: in automotive engineering the duty of one real-time embedded system is to control the brakes. Once the brake function starts, the car must be stopped within a certain amount of time. Otherwise, an accident might happen. 

Understanding whether a system can meet the timing requirements at the early design stage can help avoid design iteration and reduce the design cost. Timing analysis techniques are developed to obtain the timing behaviour of a system. 

During the design phase of a real-time embedded system, it is critical to know whether the timing behaviour of the system can meet the timing requirement. The process of deriving the timing behaviour of such systems is known as timing analysis. 

One type of the current timing analysis techniques requires much engineering cost to derive reliable timing analysis results. Another type of techniques require less engineering cost, but the results are not very reliable. 

In this thesis, Dr. Haoxuan Li proposes a timing analysis technique that combines both types of techniques. The proposed timing analysis techniques can be used by engineers to derive reliable timing analysis results at an affordable cost.