1 research outputs found
Model-Based Development of Distributed Embedded Systems by the Example of the Scicos/SynDEx Framework
The embedded systems engineering industry faces increasing demands for more
functionality, rapidly evolving components, and shrinking schedules. Abilities
to quickly adapt to changes, develop products with safe design, minimize
project costs, and deliver timely are needed. Model-based development (MBD)
follows a separation of concerns by abstracting systems with an appropriate
intensity. MBD promises higher comprehension by modeling on several
abstraction-levels, formal verification, and automated code generation. This
thesis demonstrates MBD with the Scicos/SynDEx framework on a distributed
embedded system. Scicos is a modeling and simulation environment for hybrid
systems. SynDEx is a rapid prototyping integrated development environment for
distributed systems. Performed examples implement well-known control algorithms
on a target system containing several networked microcontrollers, sensors, and
actuators. The addressed research question tackles the feasibility of MBD for
medium-sized embedded systems. In the case of single-processor applications
experiments show that the comforts of tool-provided simulation, verification,
and code-generation have to be weighed against an additional memory consumption
in dynamic and static memory compared to a hand-written approach. Establishing
a near-seamless modeling-framework with Scicos/SynDEx is expensive. An
increased development effort indicates a high price for developing single
applications, but might pay off for product families. A further drawback was
that the distributed code generated with SynDEx could not be adapted to
microcontrollers without a significant alteration of the scheduling tables. The
Scicos/SynDEx framework forms a valuable tool set that, however, still needs
many improvements. Therefore, its usage is only recommended for experimental
purposes.Comment: 146 pages, Master's Thesi