Utilizing IEC 61499 in an MDA control application development approach

Abstract

Traditional control application engineering techniques tend to mix logical functionality with hardware access methods. This greatly impedes reusability. Through separation of the logical control application domain and the specific hardware domain the MDA (Model-Driven Architecture) proposes a solution to this problem. In the domain of embedded systems development this approach brought a great advantage in reducing the complexity of the development process. In this paper we investigate if and how IEC 61499 can be utilized as a DSL (Domain Specific Language) for control application development in the domain of industrial automation systems. We will show the potentials of our work by developing a sample control application using the suggested methods.