Transformation of SysML Structure Diagrams to VHDL-AMS

2009 35th Annual Conference of IEEE Industrial Electronics, 2009

Automation industry is experiencing a boom in the deployment of FPGA based controlling systems, which beat the run-time characteristics and behavior of microprocessors-based systems and which will bring new possibilities to the sector. Particularly, FPGAs are being progressively applied to develop PLCs. However, the end user, accustomed to traditional PLC programming environments, is reluctant to this new technology, which requires an additional effort for learning a new language and development environment. This paper presents a prototype tool that applies the relatively new Model-Driven Software Development approach to program these new devices using the classical ladder diagram notation. It also demonstrates its application in the classic star-delta starter for 3-phase motors.

2007

The ModEasy project seeks to develop techniques and software tools to aid in the development of reliable microprocessor based electronic (embedded) systems using advanced development and verification systems. The tools are evaluated in domains such as the automotive sector for reactive cruise control and anti-collision radar. While current developments of such complex systems are performed by hand writing of VHDL code, we automatically generate this code from high level abstraction modeling in UML. This paper presents our tool chain that targets intensive signal processing applications.

INCOSE International Symposium, 2020

With the increasing complexity of systems, model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) has attracted increasing attention in the industry. MBSE formalizes the whole lifecycles of products using models based on systems engineering aiming to improve the development efficiency of complex systems. Traditionally, MBSE approaches require many modeling languages in each phase of the entire lifecycle. Different syntax between such languages leads to difficulty in supporting an integrated description of transformations between models and data. Thus, it is challenged to utilize a general language to describe model formalism and transformation for architecture‐driven technology and code generation in one MBSE tool. In this paper, a multi‐architecture modeling language called Karma (introduced in Paper Part 1) is proposed to support the model transformations including architecture‐driven technology and code generation implementations in one modeling tool. Finally, from one auto‐braking case of an au...

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009

Using model-based approaches for designing embedded systems helps abstract away unnecessary details in a manner that increases the potential for easy validation and verification, and facilitates reuse and evolution. A common practice is to use UML as the base language, possibly specialized by the so-called profiles. Despite the ever increasing number of profiles being built in many domains, there is still insufficient focus on discussing the issue of combining multiple profiles. Indeed, a single profile may not be adequate to cover all aspects required in the multidisciplinary domain of embedded systems. In this paper, we assess possible strategies for combining the SysML and MARTE profiles in a common modelling framework, while avoiding specification conflicts. We show that, despite some semantic and syntactical overlapping, the two are highly complementary for specifying embedded systems at different abstraction levels. We conclude, however, that a convergence agenda is highly desirable to align some key language features.

Design Automation for Embedded Systems, 2012

Modern embedded systems development, due to systems complexity and multifaceted nature, requires flexible high-level design techniques and notations. In this context, model-driven approaches are gaining popularity, both in industry as well as in academy, since they offer a high degree of abstraction and provide a common framework for the design, simulation and configuration management of complex heterogeneous systems. Moreover, a great variety of languages have been emerging as customization (or profiles) of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for the embedded system and System-on-Chip (SoC) domains.

Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering, 2011

This work presents a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) framework to improve embedded system design. The framework adopts concepts from MDE for the automatic generation of a control and data flow internal representation, starting from the functional specification of an embedded application described using UML class and sequence diagrams. By means of transformations rules applied on the UML model of the embedded system, an MOF-based (Meta Object Facility is a standard representation for meta-models and models proposed by OMG) internal representation is automatically obtained, which is iteratively mapped into a hardware/software implementation by means of model transformations. This mapping is optimized by a design space exploration (DSE) method based on a categorical graph product. The model transformations have also as input a platform model, which specifies the available hardware, software and interface resources, and produce an implementation model, on which software synthesis, communication synthesis and high-level synthesis algorithms are applied to generate the final implementation. A case study is described to illustrate the application of the framework.

2013

! SysML is an extension of UML 2.0 to support modelling for systems engineering; it inherits some of UML's diagrams, modifies others and adds two new diagrams. SysML supports modelling various aspects of a system, and in recent years, SysML has increasingly been supported by a number of tool vendors such as IBM, Atego and Sparx Systems. Our aim is to support the application of formal analysis tools and techniques at the level of the graphical notations used in current industrial practice. In particular, in this white paper, we present our results on formalising the notion of SysML blocks including their related elements such as associations, compositions, generalisations, ports, interfaces and connectors. This is achieved by a denotational semantics of SysML blocks in the COMPASS modelling language (CML), a formal specification language that supports a variety of analysis techniques. The main characteristics of the approach proposed are the compositionality of the generated models, the use of parallelism to compose different aspects of the system and the support for refinement. These aspects make it possible the application of compositional analysis techniques, and refinement strategies to obtain equivalent models better suited to alternative analysis techniques (e.g., model checking). The most interesting aspects of our models are the treatment of operation calls, the use of interleaving to model inheritance, and the use of parallelism to model block composition. Finally, whilst the models of ports are simple, the use of interface classes in the specification of a port's communication protocol proved important to preserve the compositionality of our models.

Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, 2011

The gap between high abstraction levels and low abstraction levels is often bridged with one or several Internal Representations (IR) in HLS tools. The set of concepts associated to an IR is generally difficult to handle

SIMULATION, 2014

System models are constructed to design, study, and understand complex systems. According to the systems modeling language (SysML) that is a standard for model-based system engineering, all engineering activities should be performed using a common model. To validate complex system models defined in SysML, simulation is usually employed. There are numerous efforts to simulate SysML models using different simulation methods and tools. However, the efficient support of automated generation of executable simulation code is still an issue tangled by the research community. This paper introduces DEVSys, an integrated framework for utilizing existing SysML models and automatically producing executable discrete event simulation code, according to model driven architecture (MDA) concepts. Although this approach is not simulation-specific, discrete event system specification (DEVS) was employed, due to the similarities between SysML and DEVS, mainly in system structure description, and the ma...

2010

This paper provides an overview of the formal transformation between the two complementary languages: OMG SysML TM and Modelica. SysML is a standardized general purpose graphical modeling language for capturing complex system descriptions in terms of their structure, behavior, properties, and requirements. Modelica is a standardized general purpose systems modeling language for analyzing the continuous and discrete time dynamics of complex systems in terms of differential algebraic equations. Integrating the descriptive power of SysML models with the analytic and computational power of Modelica models provides a capability that is significantly greater than provided by SysML or Modelica individually. A standardized bi-directional transformation between the two modeling languages is being developed that will support implementations to transfer efficiently and automatically the modeling information between SysML and Modelica models without ambiguity. In addition to an overview of this bi-directional transformation approach, the paper provides a simple example to clarify the transformation principles and to illustrate the important synergies resulting from the integration between these two languages.