A Model-Driven Framework for the Development of Portable Real-Time Embedded Systems

One pillar of Model-Driven Development for real-time embedded software is the separation of concerns between application model and target platform. This requires definition of model transformations realizing the mapping of the application model onto the target platform. Real-Time and Embedded Systems design means coping with different target platforms and with heterogeneous constraints related to time, synchronization and memory footprint. However, different target platforms have APIs and implementation patterns that vary significantly so that it is necessary to develop several dedicated model transformations in order to achieve portability between them. Although this is one way to achieve portability, we show in this paper that the cost of portability can be reduced by providing domain-independent model transformations while still ensuring performance requirements are satisfied.