EXOKERNEL-BASED DISTRIBUTED OPERATING SYSTEM FOR RISC-V MICROCONTROLLERS

Abstract

The industrial adoption of microcontrollers is growing drastically. Advancements in the field of Internet of Things lead to developments of large-scale automation systems such as smart homes, smart cities, etc. The centralized architecture of such systems faces challenges when it comes to scaling. A decentralized operating system injected into each of the nodes can enhance performance and provide low maintenance for scaling. Orbit - a distributed operating system kernel is proposed to create a unified framework for the execution of tasks on a network of nodes. This framework is a foundation for the distributed operating system for various microcontrollers under the RISC-V instruction set architecture. The methodology involves an evaluation of the kernel design based on exokernel principles that integrates an interrupt-driven scheduler. The anticipated results of this study are a lightweight, efficient and flexi- ble kernel capable of task distribution across a network of nodes with heterogeneous hardware. Future works may focus on the integration of advanced security meth- ods and addressing dynamic reconfiguration of the network in the event of topology changes.