eRINA – Embedded Recursive InterNetwork Architecture

2024 CSSE

The objective of this project is to develop an embedded RINA stack to be deployed on an STM32F746 Discovery board using the Ada programming language.

Team Members

Robert Myers | Mason Ticehurst | Keian Kaserman | Anthony Immekus |

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Project Summary

Overview

AdaCore, a company specialising in developing software solutions in the Ada programming language, is invested in a number of emerging technologies. AdaCore has tasked the team with developing an embedded Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) stack. RINA challenges the traditional Internet protocol suite by proposing a layered approach grounded in inter-process communication. The team faces the challenge of understanding and implementing this novel architecture, requiring extensive research and analysis of existing codebases, tutorials, and RFC readings to craft an effective plan for its development. The engineering aspect lies in devising a robust and scalable stack that adheres to RINA’s principles while ensuring compatibility and functionality within embedded systems.

Objectives

Develop an embedded RINA stack to be deployed on an STM32F746 Discovery board using the Ada programming language.

Approach

  • The team began by researching the architecture that RINA proposes.
  • The team brainstormed and refined deliverables through meetings with assigned industry mentor and academic advisor.
  • Individually built, ran, and tested various existing implementations of RINA.
  • Team settled on creating the embedded system as a receiver (client) and leveraging an existing Linux implementation (ported to Ada) as a transmitter.
  • Test suites containing unit tests would be developed in parallel with feature deployment.
  • Success would be determined by sending a message over the RINA network from a linux virtual machine to the embedded device.

Outcomes

  • AdaCore can use this project as a scaffold for future RINA implementations.
  • Using a programming language like Ada to implement a RINA architecture allows for future work to easily extend the existing implementation.
  • Ada has wide support for different embedded systems and uses concepts which can more directly translate RINA concepts to an embedded system.
  • Prove that RINA can be implemented in Ada for the STM32F746 Discovery embedded system board.
    • Many other STM embedded system boards have Ada library code to support deployment of the RINA system onto them.