Towards Efficient Component-Based Software Development of Distributed Embedded Systems

The traditional ways of developing embedded systems are pushed to their limits, largely due to the rapid increase of software in these systems. Developers now have difficulties to handle simultaneously all the factors involved in the development such as increasing complexity, limited and shared resources, distribution, timing or dependability issues. These limitations make the development of embedded systems a rather complex and time consuming task, and call for new solutions that can efficiently and predictably cope with the new specifics and requirements of embedded systems to ensure their final quality. Component-based software engineering is an attractive approach that aims at building software systems out of independent and well-defined pieces of software. This approach has already shown advantages in managing software complexity, and reducing production time while increasing software quality. However, directly applying component-based software engineering principles to embedded system development is not straightforward. It requires a considerable adaptation to fit the specifics of the domain, since guaranteeing the extra-functional aspects, such as real-time concerns, safety-criticality and resource limitations, is essential for the majority of embedded systems. Arguing that component-based software engineering is suitable for embedded system development, we introduce a component-based approach adjusted for embedded system development. This approach is centered around a dedicated component model, called ProCom, which through its two-layer structure addresses the different concerns that exist at different levels of abstraction. ProCom supports the development of loosely coupled subsystems together with small non-distributed functionalities similar to control loops. To handle the management of important concerns related to functional and extra-functional properties of embedded systems, we have extended ProCom with an attribute framework enabling a smooth integration of existing analysis techniques. We have also demonstrated the feasibility of the approach through a prototype realisation of an integrated development environment.