A model-driven approach for embedded system prototyping and design

Embedded System (ES) development complexity is increasing. This increase has several cumulative sources: some are directly related to constraints on the ES themselves (dependability, compute intensive, resource constraints) while other sources are related to the industrial context of their development (fast prototyping, early validation, parallelization of developments). Although several Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) processes have been proposed for ES development, most of them are not completely formalized. This has several drawbacks that prevent their use in prototyping where iterations need to be short and focused. Incomplete formalized processes tend to be sidestepped in these situations where quick results are expected to be obtained with limited effort. In this paper we propose a MDE-based process for ES development. This process precisely defines the development tasks and their impact on the models throughout development. In particular we define iterations width and depth for the process that allow for a fined-grained and consistent planning of developments. The short and well defined iterations characterized by the process reduce the gap between rapid prototyping, ad-hoc methods and regular development processes.