Software Behavior Description of Real-Time Embedded Systems in Component Based Software Development

Component Based Software Development (CBSD) has been established in the development of automotive real-time embedded applications at Bosch. CBSD together with Software Product Line (SPL) practice has improved software reuse, productivity, quality and complexity management, by raising the level of abstraction for software constructions and by sharing services. Although CBSD has contributed to the aforementioned improvement in the software development practice, the existing Bosch component model often requires software developers to take a close look at the implementation including models (e.g., ASCET-MD ) and even complex source code to understand software behavior and dependencies when reusing and adapting software components. This hinders the realization of the full benefits of CBSD, as the available information on the component level does not sufficiently describe important aspects of software behavior. This paper presents the concepts and case studies of ‘signal flows’ and ‘mode dependent signal flows’, which provide crucial software behavior information for real time embedded systems at the component level.