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2013
Conference Paper
Titel
Virtual prototyping with feral - adaptation and application of a simulator framework
Abstract
Nowadays, complexity and extent of embedded functionality grows rapidly, leading to distributed solutions. Distributed embedded systems can, for instance, be found in time- and safety-critical domains, such as avionics and automotive. Suitable approaches to develop these systems are virtual prototyping and model-based development. Virtual prototyping enables early testing and evaluation of systems in realistic simulated environments; model-based development is applied to design, implement, and deploy the embedded functionality itself. In this paper, we briefly survey our modular simulator framework Feral, which provides a generic solution to virtual prototyping by rapid coupling of diverse simulators, including simulators for model-based specifications. We demonstrate the adaptation of Feral by incorporating several simulators, in particular, existing simulators of Simulink and SDL models, ns-3, and our newly developed simulators for CAN and FlexRay, which are current c ommunication technologies in the automotive domain. We then apply Feral to an adaptive cruise control system, evaluating different design alternatives in a real world scenario. In particular, we evaluate early design decisions by substantiating them with facts, e. g., regarding the performance of a particular system architecture or communication technology.