Technical Documentation of Software and Hardware in Embedded Systems

Embedded systems are characterized by the presence of software and hardware components. They are integrated e.g. into telecommunication or products such as cars. Due to the size of embedded systems and the reuse of components, documentation of them becomes more important. Although the importance of documentation has increased over the years, it is still a largely neglected part of the development process. In this paper the authors discuss the integration of the technical documentation in the software and hardware development processes. Therefore, the authors analyze and evaluate classical software and hardware development models with regard to technical documentation. Furthermore, the authors present a workflow for documentation which is derived from practical experience and can be integrated in existing software and hardware development models. As a proof of concept we present an approach for the integration of documentation techniques into one software development workflow