From UML/MARTE to RTDT: A model driven based method for scheduling analysis and HW/SW partitioning

Unified Modeling Language (UML) extensions for real time embedded systems (RTES) co-design are taking a growing interest by a great number of industrial and research communities. The extension mechanism is provided by UML profiles for RTES and it aims at improving an easily-understood method of system design for non-experts. One of the key items of the co-design methods is the Hardware/Software partitioning and scheduling tasks. Indeed, it is mandatory to define where and when tasks are implemented and run. Unfortunately, the main goals of co-design are not included in the usual practice of UML profiles. So, there exists a need for mapping used models to an execution platform for both schedulability test and HW/SW partitioning. In the present work, test schedulability and design space exploration are performed at an early stage. The proposed approach adopts Model Driven Engineering MDE. It starts from UML specification annotated with the recent profile for the Modeling and Analysis of Real Time Embedded systems MARTE. Following refinement strategy, transformation rules allow the finding of a feasible schedule that satisfies timing constraints and defining where tasks will be implemented. The overall approach is experimented on the design of a football player robot application.