A Component-Based Approach for Constructing High-Confidence Distributed Real-Time and Embedded Systems

In applying Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) techniques to the domain of Distributed Real-time and Embedded (DRE) Systems, there are five critical challenges: 1) discovery of relevant components and resources, 2) specification and modeling of components, 3) exploration and elimination of design assembly options, 4) automated generation of heterogeneous component bridges, and 5) validation of context-related embedded systems. To address these challenges, this paper introduces four core techniques to facilitate high-confidence DRE system construction from components: 1) A component and resource discovery technique promotes component searching based on rich and precise descriptions of components and context; 2) A timed colored Petri Net-based modeling toolkit enables design and analysis on DRE systems, as well as reduces unnecessary later work by eliminating infeasible design options; 3) A formal specification language describes all specifications consistently and automatically generates component bridges for seamless system integration; and 4) A grammar-based formalism specifies context behaviors and validates integrated systems using sufficient context-related test cases. The success of these ongoing techniques may not only accelerate the software development pace and reduce unnecessary development cost, but also facilitate high-confidence DRE system construction using different formalisms over the entire software life-cycle.