Enabling trade-off analysis of NFRs on models of embedded systems

Satisfaction of Non-Functional Requirements (NFR), is a key factor in successful design of embedded systems. This is mainly due to the constraints and resource limitations in these systems. A design that cannot achieve functionality of the system under these limitations is actually a failure. Therefore, NFRs in design of embedded systems deserve special attention. However, one big issue is that NFRs are interconnected and cannot be considered in isolation; especially that they can have direct impacts on each other such as security and performance. This means that a careful balance and trade-off analysis among NFRs is necessary. In this paper, we focus on this need and identify what information about NFRs is required in order to perform trade-off analysis. We propose and explain our in-progress approach to incorporate this information into system models in order to enable trade-off analysis. Our approach is based on UML profiling method to annotate model elements with necessary information.