A comparison of executable model based approaches for embedded systems

Designing and building embedded systems is a challenging problem. Designers must ensure that the software architecture meets its functional requirements and also, since embedded systems often have real-time constraints, meets its performance requirements. It is usually difficult to determine whether or not the embedded system designs will meet functional and performance requirements. To help increase confidence in embedded software architectures, designers often turn to executable model based approaches to assess their systems. There are many different approaches for designing and analyzing real-time embedded systems. This paper is intended to help designers in their choice by comparing two different executable model based approaches for designing and validating real-time embedded systems, namely state machines and colored Petri nets. Both approaches are compared using seven different comparison criteria and examples are given from a cruise control system case study.