Multi-Facet design methodology for Real-Time embedded control systems

The design of real-time embedded control systems follows usually a V-process. Several actors belonging to control and computer science area are involved, and various languages and tools, with different tenninologies and semantics, are used. This heterogeneity introduces lacks of consistency in the system design and leads usually to a disconnected design process where the transformation of models is needed between process steps. These transformations are usually performed manually. Thus, errors may be introduced in models. and performance and stability of the control system may be affected. Correcting these errors lengthens the design lifecycle and time to market (Kocik and Sorel, 2004). In this paper, we propose a new methodology which aims to fill the gaps due to the lack of consistency by unifying the terminologies and semantics used and reduces the time spent in translation and debugging. It provides a multi-facet design relying on an unified system metamodel in order to link the semantic differences between control and real-time computing languages and tools.