Model-Based Design of the Communication System in an Integrated Architecture

The DECOS integrated architecture supports the sharing of a single time-triggered network for multiple application subsystems. As its communication infrastructure each application subsystem possesses a virtual network with guaranteed temporal properties, which is realized on top of the physical time-triggered network. This paper presents a solution for the model-based design of virtual networks in order to reduce development time and avoid design faults. A graphical modeling tool enables system engineers to create a virtual network model that captures all relevant properties for instantiating virtual networks in a specific application. The virtual network model forms the input to a code generator, the output of which can be deployed on the target system together with the application code. The development process is exemplified in an automotive example, which exploits virtual networks for application subsystems derived from present-day automotive architectures.