Architectural description of embedded systems: a systematic review

Embedded systems have gained more and more attention, as variety and complexity of these systems have increased. In particular, many of these systems are also critical regarding dependability, safety, security, among others. In parallel, since software architectures and reference architectures form the backbone of any successful system, including embedded systems, an important and even essential activity is to properly describe such architectures. However, to our best knowledge, there is no detailed panorama on how software architectures and reference architectures for embedded systems could be represented. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is to present and discuss results of a systematic review, aiming at providing this wide and, at the same time, deep panorama. We found out that different approaches have been proposed and used, lacking of consensus on how to better represent architectures of embedded systems. We also identified a range of quality requirements and constraints that have been considered in the architectural description of these systems. Furthermore, these results can be considered as valuable means to identify research lines that need to be further investigated.