A model based approach for debugging embedded systems in real-time

Model driven design and development of real-time embedded systems has been gaining a lot of attention in the recent past. It is imperative for a hard real-time embedded system to execute and respond to sequenced exchanges of messages under critical temporal constraints. The UML provides artifacts such as communication diagrams, sequence diagrams and timing diagrams to aid software engineers to model and precisely document such a schedule of interactions or state changes at the design level. While modeling at the design level is interesting on one hand, it is also significant to understand the run time behavior of the embedded software. A step forward in this direction is to provide a real-time representation of the target system behavior on the host side. We propose an approach to realize a target debugger on the host side with a monitor solution in the target side. With the back annotated information from the target, a visual representation of the system behavior in real-time is now available at the design level. This way, a debugging solution in real-time is provided, thus taking a step forward towards understanding the behavior of the embedded software at hand. We illustrate our proposed approach with a prototype and examples.