Development of Critical Embedded Systems Using Model-Driven and Product Lines Techniques: A Systematic Review

Several methodologies have been proposed in the last decades to improve the quality of Safety-Critical Embedded Systems (SCES) and, at the same time, keep costs and schedule compatible with project plans. In particular, approaches such as Product Line Engineering (PLE) and Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) offer an interesting solution to reduce development complexity and time to market due to their synergy and common goals. However, the current state of how MDE and PLE can be combined to enhance productivity in the domain of SCES is not clear yet. This paper presents a systematic literature review, with the purpose of obtaining the state of the art of the aproaches, methods and methodologies whose goal is the combination of PLE and MDE for the development of SCES, and to verify the existence of empirical studies that demonstrate the application of these techniques in this type of development. We drew the following conclusions from the review results: (1) The number of studies using PLE with MDE to build SCES is relatively small, but has increased gradually in recent years. (2) The approaches diverge about what is needed to build Model-driven Product Lines. (3) Most of the approaches do not consider to differentiate between hardware and software variabilities. (4) Most of the studies propose the use of UML and feature diagrams. (5) The studies present case studies implemented in different tools and most of them are free. (6) The approaches do not cover the entire development lifecycle.