Verification and analysis of domain-specific models of physical characteristics in embedded control software

Context:\ud A considerable portion of the software systems today are adopted in the embedded control domain. Embedded control software deals with controlling a physical system, and as such models of physical characteristics become part of the embedded control software.\ud Objective:\ud Due to the evolution of system properties and increasing complexity, faults can be left undetected in these models of physical characteristics. Therefore, their accuracy must be verified at runtime. Traditional runtime verification techniques that are based on states/events in software execution are inadequate in this case. The behavior suggested by models of physical characteristics cannot be mapped to behavioral properties of software. Moreover, implementation in a general-purpose programming language makes these models hard to locate and verify. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel approach to perform runtime verification of models of physical characteristics in embedded control software.\ud Method:\ud The development of an approach for runtime verification of models of physical characteristics and the application of the approach to two industrial case studies from the printing systems domain.\ud Results:\ud This paper presents a novel approach to specify models of physical characteristics using a domain-specific language, to define monitors that detect inconsistencies by exploiting redundancy in these models, and to realize these monitors using an aspect-oriented approach. We complement runtime verification with static analysis to verify the composition of domain-specific models with the control software written in a general-purpose language.\ud Conclusions:\ud The presented approach enables runtime verification of implemented models of physical characteristics to detect inconsistencies in these models, as well as broken hardware components and wear and tear of hardware in the physical system. The application of declarative aspect-oriented techniques to realize runtime verification monitors increases modularity and provides the ability to statically verify this realization. The complementary static and runtime verification techniques increase the reliability of embedded control software

An architectural style for optimizing system qualities in adaptive embedded systems using Multi-Objective Optimization

Customers of today's complex embedded systems demand the optimization of multiple system qualities under varying operational conditions. To be able to influence the system qualities, the system must have parameters that can be adapted. Constraints may be defined on the value of these parameters. Optimizing multiple system qualities under the given set of parameters and constraints is called Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO). This is a well-known mathematical problem, for which numerous solutions have been proposed. The application of an MOO solution in an embedded system involves specific design decisions. It is preferable that these design decisions are documented in the architectural description. Therefore, this paper presents an architectural style, which specializes the Component-and-Connector viewtype, to enable the analysis and design of an architecture from an MOO point of view. A case study from industry is used to demonstrate the usage of this style

Runtime Verification of Domain-Specific Models of Physical Characteristics in Control Software

Control logic of embedded systems is nowadays largely implemented in software. Such control software implements, among others, models of physical characteristics, like heat exchange among system components. Due to evolution of system properties and increasing complexity, faults can be left undetected in these models. Therefore, their accuracy must be verified at runtime. Traditional runtime verification techniques that are based on states and/or events in software execution are inadequate in this case. The behavior suggested by models of physical characteristics cannot be mapped to behavioral properties of software. Moreover, implementation in a general-purpose programming language makes these models hard to locate and verify. This paper presents a novel approach to explicitly specify models of physical characteristics using a domain-specific language, to define monitors for inconsistencies by detecting and exploiting redundancy in these models, and to realize these monitors using an aspect-oriented approach. The approach is applied to two industrial case studies

Verification and analysis of domain-specific models of physical characteristics in embedded control software

Context:\ud A considerable portion of the software systems today are adopted in the embedded control domain. Embedded control software deals with controlling a physical system, and as such models of physical characteristics become part of the embedded control software.\ud Objective:\ud Due to the evolution of system properties and increasing complexity, faults can be left undetected in these models of physical characteristics. Therefore, their accuracy must be verified at runtime. Traditional runtime verification techniques that are based on states/events in software execution are inadequate in this case. The behavior suggested by models of physical characteristics cannot be mapped to behavioral properties of software. Moreover, implementation in a general-purpose programming language makes these models hard to locate and verify. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel approach to perform runtime verification of models of physical characteristics in embedded control software.\ud Method:\ud The development of an approach for runtime verification of models of physical characteristics and the application of the approach to two industrial case studies from the printing systems domain.\ud Results:\ud This paper presents a novel approach to specify models of physical characteristics using a domain-specific language, to define monitors that detect inconsistencies by exploiting redundancy in these models, and to realize these monitors using an aspect-oriented approach. We complement runtime verification with static analysis to verify the composition of domain-specific models with the control software written in a general-purpose language.\ud Conclusions:\ud The presented approach enables runtime verification of implemented models of physical characteristics to detect inconsistencies in these models, as well as broken hardware components and wear and tear of hardware in the physical system. The application of declarative aspect-oriented techniques to realize runtime verification monitors increases modularity and provides the ability to statically verify this realization. The complementary static and runtime verification techniques increase the reliability of embedded control software

MOO: An architectural framework for runtime optimization of multiple system objectives in embedded control software

Today's complex embedded systems function in varying operational conditions. The control software adapts several control variables to keep the operational state optimal with respect to multiple objectives. There exist well-known techniques for solving such optimization problems. However, current practice shows that the applied techniques, control variables, constraints and related design decisions are not documented as a part of the architecture description. Their implementation is implicit, tailored for specific characteristics of the embedded system, tightly integrated into and coupled with the control software, which hinders its reusability, analyzability and maintainability. This paper presents an architectural framework to design, document and realize multi-objective optimization in embedded control software. The framework comprises an architectural style together with its visual editor and domain-specific analysis tools, and a code generator. The code generator generates an optimizer module specific for the given architecture and it employs aspect-oriented software development techniques to seamlessly integrate this module into the control software. The effectiveness of the framework is validated in the context of an industrial case study from the printing systems domain

Compose*: a Language- and Platform-Independent Aspect Compiler for Composition Filters

This paper presents Compose*, a compilation and execution framework for the Composition Filters model. The Composition Filters model is designed to improve the composability of object-based programs. It is claimed that this approach is largely language-independent, and has previously been applied to languages such as Smalltalk, Java and C++. However, building a new Composition Filters compiler for each target language results in the duplication of compilation technology. Therefore, one of the aims of Compose* is to provide a language and platform independent compiler framework for the Composition Filters model. This paper provides the design rationale behind a tool architecture that supports this language and platform independence. It explains the use of language independent abstractions of the base program structure and how to include existing tools, such as compilers, to interface with the target language. The language and platform independence of Compose* has been verified by applying the compiler framework to multiple languages of the .NET platform, the Java language and platform and the C language