Software and hardware models in component-based development of embedded systems

Abstract: As modern embedded systems grow in complexity component-based development is an increasingly attractive approach to make the development of such systems simpler and less error prone. In this approach software systems are built by composing them out of prefabricated software components. One of the challenges for applying component-based development to embedded systems is the tight coupling between the software and the hardware platform. To take full advantage of the component-based approach in the embedded domain, the development process has to provide support for describing and handling this coupling.The goal of this thesis is to provide advancements in development of embedded component-based systems by using a combination of software and hardware models. To achieve the overall research goal, three different aspects are investigated: (i) how to provide support for integration of sensors and actuators in component-based development, (ii) how to utilize a combination of software and hardware models in development of distributed systems, and (iii) how to analyze extra-functional system properties using models of both software and hardware. The thesis goal is addressed by following contributions: (i) a component-based model which allows describing sensors and actuators, and how they are connected to the processing nodes and software components, (ii) a method for automatic synthesis of code for communication with sensors and actuators, (iii) a framework for automatic generation of distributed communication in component-based models and (iv) a compositional model-level analysis of timing and processing node utilization for component-based applications. These contributions are evaluated in separation, by applying prototype tools to either example systems, case-studies, or test scenarios.