Analyzable Modeling of Legacy Communication in Component-Based Distributed Embedded Systems

Abstract

We present extensions to the existing industrial component model Rubus Component Model (RCM). By introducing special purpose components to encapsulate and abstract the communication protocols in distributed embedded systems we allow use of legacy nodes and legacy protocols in a component-based and model-based software engineering environment. With the addition of these components, RCM will be able to support state-of-the-practice development processes of distributed embedded systems where communication rules are defined early in the development process. The proposed extension also allows model-based and component-based development of new nodes that are deployed in the legacy systems that use predefined communication rules. We also demonstrate how an end-to-end timing model can be extracted from a distributed embedded system modeled with extended RCM. The extracted model is then used to perform an end-to-end timing analysis that we implemented in the Rubus Analysis Framework.