Tell-Tale Guardian as a Safety Mechanism for Mixed-Criticality Instrument Cluster
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Modern automotive instrument clusters no longer display only safety-critical vehicle information, but also infotainment and comfort features, which makes them mixed-criticality systems. High-level operating systems (HLOS) such as Linux or Android are well suited for rendering complex graphical content, but cannot inherently guarantee the integrity of safety-critical data.To address this limitation, safety-critical data monitoring is commonly employed. A typical mixed-criticality architecture combines a system-on-chip (SoC) running an HLOS for rendering with a separate microcontroller (MCU) that monitors safety-critical information. While effective, this approach increases system complexity and integration effort due to the need for an external MCU.This paper presents a mixed-criticality instrument cluster architecture monitored by a tell-tale guardian implemented on a single SoC. In the proposed solution, both the instrument cluster and the tell-tale guardian run on the same SoC in separate operating system instances, isolated by a safety hypervisor. This approach reduces hardware complexity while preserving the required level of safety for critical vehicle information.
Authors: Nemanja Trifunovic, Dusan Kenjic
Language: English
Subfield: Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7203758774