ECE 544 - Fault-Tolerant Computing and Reliability Engineering

3 credits
3 hours lecture
Prerequisites: ECE 260; MTH 212; MTH 331 or ECE 384; or permission of instructor
Techniques for designing and analyzing dependable and fault-tolerant computer-based systems. Topics addressed include fault, error, and failure cause- and-effect relationships; fault avoidance techniques; fault tolerance techniques, including hardware, software, information, and time redundancy; fault coverage; time-to-failure models and distributions; reliability modeling and evaluation techniques, including fault trees, cut-sets, reliability block diagrams, binary decision diagrams, and Markov models. In addition, availability modeling, safety modeling, and trade-off analysis are presented. The course will also include a research paper and investigation of current topics.