Combining Single-processor Prototyping and Code Generation for the Development of Distributed Embedded Systems

Résumé du livre

Distributed embedded systems can be very challenging to test - not only is there increased complexity in the design of the software and operating systems, but we may also have to evaluate different scheduling and fault-tolerance approaches for suitability. The result is that system-level testing will generally take place in hardware at a much later time than would be possible with a single-processor system. Carrying out high-level testing at an early stage of the software development process offers a number of advantages in the common scenarios of changing and poorly specified requirements; this thesis aims to address these concerns. A tool-supported process is introduced, which is capable of converting a single-processor prototype embedded system into various multi-processor equivalents, allowing the creation and use of a testable system at an earlier stage of development. The process is then expanded to incorporate the automatic generation of source-code supporting redundancy, essentially allowing a developer to focus on writing code and leave the exploration of multi-processor scheduling and fault-tolerance mechanisms to the process described in this thesis. These approaches are illustrated by means of empirical studies.