Michael Beine

Automatic Code Generation and Platform Based Design Methodology: An Engine Management System Design Case Study

The design of a complex real-time embedded system requires the specification of its functionality, the design of the hardware and software architectures, the implementation of hardware and software components and finally the system validation. The designer, starting from the specification, refines the solution trying to minimize the system cost while satisfying functional and non functional requirements. The automatic code generation from models and the introduction of the platform-based design methodology can drastically improve the design efficiency of the software partition, while maintaining acceptable the cost overhead of the final system. In this approach, both top-down and bottom-up aspects are considered and solutions are found by a meet-in-the-middle approach that couples model refinement and platform modeling. In more details, given a model of the implementation platform, which describes the available services and data types, the algorithms captured by models are refined and then automatically translated to software components. These components are integrated with handwritten (e.g. legacy) software modules together with the software platform. A final validation phase on the real target is performed to finally validate the functionality and to guarantee that the performance constraints are met. The methodology described in this paper has proven in the years of deployment its validity and maturity level. The effective results are the improvement of the time-to-market and the capability to cope with the complexity of modern embedded controllers for power-train. The selected automatic code generation environment (the model compiler) has been instrumental in implementing our model based design methodology. In the future, the platform based design methodology will allow an easy accommodation of the new automotive software architecture standard promoted by the AUTOSAR consortium.

Transforming a control design model into an efficient production application

Model-based design methods are well-established for the development of embedded control systems. Rapid control prototyping and automatic production code generation are widely applied to decisively speed up the software development process of electronic control units (ECUs). This paper describes the necessary transformation steps of the controller model from early controller design to final implementation on production hardware

Behavior Modeling Tools in an Architecture-Driven Development Process - From Function Models to AUTOSAR

This paper will first introduce and classify the basic principles of architecture-driven software development and will briefly sketch the presumed development process. This background information is then used to explain extensions which enable current behavior modeling and code generation tools to operate as software component generators. The generation of AUTOSAR software components using dSPACEs production code generator TargetLink is described as an example.

A Model-Based Reference Workflow for the Development of Safety-Related Software

Model-based software development is increasingly being used to develop software for electronic control units (ECUs). When developing safety-related software, compared to nonsafety-related software development, additional requirements specified by relevant safety-standards have to be met. Meeting these requirements should also be considered to be best practices for non-safety-related software. This paper introduces a model-based reference workflow for the development of safety-related software conforming to relevant safety-standards such as IEC 61508 and ISO 26262. The reference workflow discusses requirements traceability aspects, software architecture considerations that help to support modular development and ease the verification of model parts and the code generated from those model parts, and the selection and enforcement of modeling and coding guidelines. Special focus is put on software unit and integration testing as an integral part of the overall verification and validation task. The presented methods and measures are mapped to the requirements of relevant functional safety-standards applied in the automotive industry. Furthermore the paper discusses the role of such a reference workflow for answering the ongoing question for software tool qualification. The new automotive safety-standard ISO 26262 introduces a new approach to adressing this topic. This approach is based on a new way of classifcation of the software tool based on the tools impact and the degree of confidence that a malfunction or erroneous output can be prevented or detected. SAFETY STANDARDS Standards that apply to automotive software development are IEC 61508 [1] and particularly new ISO 26262 [2]. IEC 61508 is a generic across-the-industries standard that encourages the derivation of industry-specific standards. It originated in the process control automation industry, and sector-specific standards have already been derived for the process industry (IEC 61511), nuclear power plants (IEC 61513) and machinery (IEC 61513). New ISO 26262, which reached ISO Draft International Standard (DIS) status in July 2009, is a derivative that is especially tailored to the automotive industry. Where IEC 61508 has to remain abstract in many points, ISO 26262 is far more specific with regard to automotive electronics development. IEC 61508 was created and published in the late 1990s, before model-based development and code generation became widely adopted. It can therefore give little direct advice of how to comply within a model-based development process. The standard has therefore to be interpreted. ISO 26262 AND MODEL-BASED DEVELOPMENT ISO 26262 addresses this issue and specifically covers model-based development aspects, reflecting the importance of this approach in automotive software development today. The ISO 26262 part relevant to model-based development is “Part 6: Product development: software level”. It contains a separate chapter in the annex that describes the concept of model-based development of in-vehicle software and outlines its implications on the product development at the software level. In this annex also differences between code-based and model-based development are pointed out. Furthermore there are several notes throughout ISO/DIS 26262-6 directly A Model-Based Reference Workflow for the Development of Safety-Related Software 2010-01-2338 Published 10/19/2010

Integrated Tool Chain for Testing Safety-Critical Assistance Systems by Means of Simulation

European Commission Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) and lane departure warning (LDW) mandated for commercial vehicles

Block diagram based real-time simulation on a network of Alpha processors and C40 DSPs

This contribution describes the inner mechanisms of the so called Real-Time Interface to Simulink for Multiprocessor systems (RTIMP). RTI-MP is applied in the area of Rapid Controller Prototyping and Hardware-in-the-Loop simulations, where high-end computing power is required that can not be realized on a single CPU. Typical users are control engineers who are not too familiar with the details of multiprocessor hardware, distributed real-time kernels, and parallel programming. Therefore RTI-MP is based on an intuitive graphical representation of the multiprocessor system in form of a Simulink block diagram, which is well known to control engineers. The simulation model is implemented fully automatical on a network of DEC Alpha processors and Texas Instruments C40 DSPs.