Applied MDA for Embedded Devices: Software Design and Code Generation for a Low-Cost Mobile Phone

Abstract

When it comes to embedded devices, producing highly dependable, fail-safe and efficient software solutions is indispensable. Such devices usually ship in large numbers, should run 24/7, have real-time constraints and work autonomously most of the time, which is why a very high software quality is required. At the same time, as companies are always looking for ways to cut costs, it is not easy to provide reliability and guarantee a high level of product quality all at the same time. Changing requirements and the fast pace of innovation in terms of ever new hardware capabilities, combined with the need for frequent software updates, demand an easy mechanism to change software quickly and enable reuse. Applying smart software solutions is a way of addressing above issues. Formal approaches such as model driven architecture (MDA) have been proposed, but often lack realizability due to various problems in practice. The proposed solution addresses these issues and focuses on what it takes to fully take advantage of MDA by pointing out methodologies and tool chains that have been applied in a real world project to enable high quality code generation for software of a low-cost mobile phone.