Code Generation from Statecharts: Simulation of Wireless Sensor Networks

Automatic generation of code starting from lightweight modeling languages such as UML is by now a widely adopted approach. In particular generation of executable SystemC models starting from StateCharts and other UML diagrams represents a promising research field. While RTL SystemC appears better suited for matching the StateCharts formalism (being intrinsically clocked), performances of the generated code suffer from the heavy overhead induced by time management, specially when the number of concurrent processes is high. In this paper we present a methodology that allows applying a solution mixing event based and clock-driven approach. More specifically, clock-driven simulation is activated only when the configuration of the system is identified to be evolving. When no events are present this fact is also detected (together with the interval of absence of events) so that no simulation is performed although the clock runs on. This solution is particularly suited for low duty cycle systems, as, e.g. when simulating Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN); in such instances, speedup of the generated code has been found to be well over two orders of magnitude. Application of the technique to the generation of a power simulator for the IEEE 802.15.4 networking protocol is used as a test case.