Faststream’s Generic Firmware Over The Air Services: Fast and Secure Way to Upgrade Your Devices

FOTA is a method that allows for over-the-air firmware upgrades to push new features and configuration modifications responsible for operating the underlying hardware. The FOTA gateway, which is connected to the in-vehicle network, talks with the ECU, which is capable of FOTA updates. The FOTA (Firmware Over The Air) system is made up of three parts: a FOTA server, which oversees vehicle software releases, a FOTA client, which communicates with the backend server, and a FOTA agent, which performs run-time firmware upgrades.

It is critical to be able to upgrade the operating systems of linked assets to maintain them safely, offer new features, and repair problems. The Internet of Things (IoT) has a lot of potentials, but it also has a lot of implementation obstacles, such as context-aware updates, connectivity concerns, security risk updates, IoT deployment scale issues, and recovery from interrupted updates. Firmware upgrades have become a typical component of IoT systems to keep the huge number of linked devices up to date and safe. Faststream is providing over-the-air (OTA) software update service (FOTA service) for automobiles, medical devices, robotics, and more

Device Firmware Update

A device firmware update (DFU) is an operation that is used to update the firmware on a device, either partially or completely. In most cases, DFU is dependent on the presence of a bootloader. A bootloader is a small piece of code that is in charge of Launching a device’s main firmware or operating system (OS) and Providing the ability to update the device’s main firmware or operating system.

Why boot loader optimized and kept to a minimum?

⦁ To minimize the impact on boot times.
⦁ To keep bugs to a minimum in this critical part of the device’s firmware. Bootloaders are rarely updated, so they must be robust.
⦁ The size of the bootloader affects how much ROM is available for application firmware.

What are the main operations of the DFU process?

⦁ Updating the application, the stack, the operating system. also sometimes even the bootloader.
⦁ Verifying the authenticity of DFU packages.
⦁ Preventing downgrades.
⦁ Checking for hardware compatibility.
⦁ Validating the accuracy of data.
⦁ must decrypt encrypted data.
⦁ Support for updating via various transport mediums.

How Does Faststream’s OTA DFU work?

⦁ The firmware image and manifest are encrypted, signed, and transmitted to the firmware update server.
⦁ The end device queries the firmware update server to obtain the latest firmware image and manifest.
⦁ Decryption, validation, and application of the package will take place.

Faststream’s Device Firmware Update Process

A Device Firmware Update requires two devices: the DFU target and the DFU controller. The DFU target is the device that receives a new firmware image that may include a new application, SoftDevice (wireless protocol stack develop by nordic), bootloader, or a combination of SoftDevice and bootloader. The DFU controller transfers the image. The DFU controller, for example, could be a mobile phone running an app or an nRF connect to a desktop (via an nRF52 DK).

The target device may be in DFU mode, or it may be running the application with DFU running in the background. After receiving an init packet, the target device will complete the pre-validation phase. This init packet contains critical information such as the image type, hash of the image, firmware version, hardware version, allowed SoftDevice versions, and others. If the init packet is validated, the controller will begin sending the DFU image to the target. The target will receive and validate the entire DFU image. After validating the DFU image, the target will be reset and the bootloader will activate the new DFU image to replace the original image.

Challenges Of Traditional FOTA Updates

⦁ The target device should include ROM. Which is capable of storing the previous version of the software as a fallback application if the new software fails.
⦁ Because the target device has limited RAM storage, larger files cannot be transferred at once. Furthermore, the protocol used to transfer data differs between devices.
⦁ We must ensure that the server is a reliable source. Authentication is the term for this security challenge.

Faststream’s Solutions for FOTA Updates

⦁ Due to the target device’s limited RAM, we developed a new method for sending data. Our software will separate the data into structured files and send them one at a time and these files will write to the ROM. The software will automatically verify and prepare the update when it is finished.
⦁ Our FOTA architecture ensures that the present application remains operational while a FOTA upgrade is performed and the new application is securely deployed. Also, the FOTA update should include a mechanism for reverting to the previous firmware if the new update is corrupted or interrupted for any reason.
⦁ Providing TFTP Security protocol

Contact FastStream for more information: info@faststreamtech.com