A MDA-Based Approach for General Embedded Software Simulation Platform

The needs for reusing software components and integrating them into a system arise from complexity of embedded system. As one of the most important embedded system development tools, simulation platform is in favor of the reuse and integration of simulation software components and models. This paper presents a simulation platform for general embedded software followed the idea of component reuse and integration through Model Driven Architecture (MDA). There are four components in the simulation platform architecture: data exchange interface, data process engine, actuator module and signal exchange interface. Simulation system could be developed using models provided by an extendable component/model library based on the MathWorks Matlab/Simulink in the platform, which helps improved the reusability and decrease time-to market of embedded system. As a case study, the implementation of the proposed platform and a smarthome control system development example are demonstrated in an experiment. The results show that this platform is feasible and effective.