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Code generation for distributed embedded systems with VDM-RT

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Abstract

Developing embedded systems that are distributed is a challenging endeavour, since they need to ensure system-wide properties as well as existence of a large number of possible candidate system architectures. Various model based techniques advocate raising the abstraction level in order to support a holistic view of such a distributed embedded system. Furthermore, automatically generating implementation specific code from models can support realisation efforts including avoiding inconsistencies between model and code. In this paper we present how such efforts can be aided for a distributed embedded system modelled in the real time dialect of the Vienna Development Method, VDM-RT, by means of automatic code generation. The contributions in this paper are (1) code generation capabilities for distributed embedded system modelled in VDM-RT; (2) demonstration of its applicability for an industrial case study involving a distributed interlocking system from the railways domain. Additionally, we discuss the balance between code generation for a model, which assumes idealised communication (no messages lost), and manually produced code, e.g. in the industrial case study legacy low-level code ensures fault-tolerant communication in the final implementation.

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Notes

  1. Experiments with describing dynamically reconfigured distributed systems have also be carried out [34].

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript. We would also like to thank Nick Battle for valuable feedback on the content of this paper. The work presented here is partially supported by the INTO-CPS project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme under Grant agreement number 664047. Tommaso Fabbri would also like to thank the European Space Agency for providing financial support for the ESA Summer of Code in Space enabled the ASN.1 work presented here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Miran Hasanagić, Peter Gorm Larsen, Victor Bandur & Peter Tran-Jørgensen

  2. University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Tommaso Fabbri

  3. ClearSy, Marseille, France

    Julien Ouy

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  1. Miran Hasanagić
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Correspondence to Miran Hasanagić.

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Hasanagić, M., Fabbri, T., Larsen, P.G. et al. Code generation for distributed embedded systems with VDM-RT. Des Autom Embed Syst 23, 153–177 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10617-019-09227-0

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