A Case Study on SDF-Based Code Generation for ECU Software Development

Model-Based Design has been used in the industry for the design of embedded systems and various code generators have been developed. Synchronous Dataflow (SDF) is a Model of Computation (MoC) commonly used for modeling signal processing and control systems. In an SDF model, through model analyzing and calculation in the compiling stage, the execution order of components is determined statically with advantages in overhead, memory usage and deadlock avoidance. An Electronic Control Unit (ECU) for vehicle climate control is used in this case study. The ECU model in Simulink is imported as a model in MoDAL with SDF defined as the MoC, and the model is then interpreted to a MoML file for Ptolemy II to perform code generation. The case study shows the potential of SDF-based code generation to be used in the development process of embedded systems.