Actor-Oriented Methodology for Automotive Engine Control System Design

Engine control systems, consisted of ECU hardware, software, sensors, and actuators, are the most significant part of automotive control, and can be considered as mixed-signal systems which interact with engine through sensors and actuators. In this article, we present a component-based modeling and simulation framework for automotive system design. This component framework is compatible with AUTOSAR basic software modules, based on actor meta-model, using a hierarchical approach to manage heterogeneity in modeling automotive control systems. Semantically different frameworks are composed hierarchically to manage heterogeneous models and achieve actor and framework reuse. A framework is also an environment that actors reside in and is also as a platform for engine control system design. The methodology was implemented in the Ptolemy II software environment. Examples were given to show the applications of this framework in a common-rail testbed control system we designed for Beijing Public Transport Service Co.