A Lightweight Message-Based Inter-Component Communication Infrastructure

This article introduces a lightweight message-based inter-component communication infrastructure called Signaling and Communication Link (SCL). Specifically targeted for inter-process communication in embedded systems, SCL is characterized by three independent building blocks: topology definition, message transport and data serialization. Due to its broker-free, multi-platform, and multi-language messaging approach, SCL speeds up the design process of complex software systems and enables a wide range of applications. We discuss the related work in comparison to our approach, providing a qualitative analysis and specify requirements which are important for designing such a system. The design as well as the implementation and evaluation of SCL are discussed in detail. To illustrate the applicability of our approach in different projects, we discuss two research platforms from the area of mobile communications which already employ SCL as their primary inter-component communication infrastructure.