Model Driven Engineering for Distributed Real-Time Embedded Systems 2009: Advances, Standards, Applications and Perspectives

Chapter 5

Using MARTE and SysML for Modeling Real-Time Embedded Systems ¹

5.1. Introduction

The design of embedded systems is a complex process that depends more and more on the effective interplay of multiple disciplines, such as mechanical, control, electronics and software engineering. In particular, the lack of a common design language between different disciplines hampers reasoning about system properties. The architecture of a system is particularly vulnerable to bad design choices made in the early design phases, which, unfortunately, often tend to show up later during the integration or construction phases. Designers of one part of the system may make incorrect assumptions concerning some other parts resulting in increasing development costs due to long feedback cycles.

The use of models throughout the design process is gaining momentum in addressing these issues [SEL 07]. Models allow designers from different disciplines to share knowledge, facilitate design comprehension, and assess system-level trade-offs seeking higher quality and reliability. We subscribe to the view that both system design and integration will be reduced significantly by the use of a common modeling formalism, even for smaller projects. In particular, we believe that the widespread acceptance of UML (Unified Modeling Language) [OMGa] by industry and the use of UML profiles for domain-specific expressiveness ease the challenge considerably. A UML profile is the standard mechanism to create domain-specific ...