MDA-based development in the DECOS integrated architecture - modeling the hardware platform

Abstract

Reduced time-to-market in spite of increasing the system's functionality, reuse of software on different hardware platforms, and the demand for performing validation activities earlier in the development phase raise the need for revising the state-of-the-art development methodologies for distributed embedded systems. The model driven architecture is a design methodology addressing these emerging requirements. Developing embedded systems according to this model-based paradigm requires a platform-independent representation of the functionality of the application as well as a precise model of the targeted hardware platform. In this paper we introduce a meta-model for capturing the resources of hardware platforms realizing the DECOS architecture, which is an integrated time-triggered architecture aimed at the development of distributed embedded systems. Furthermore, we present a tool chain based on this meta-model that speeds up the modeling process and reduces the likelihood of human errors by facilitating the reuse of hardware building blocks from libraries