COMPASS - Component Based Automotive System Software

01.09.2005 - 31.12.2007
Research funding project
Today¿s vehicle networks are transforming automotive components into truly distributed electronic systems. Replacing rigid mechanical components with dynamically configurable electronic elements triggers an almost organic, system wide level of integration. As a result, the automotive industry expects savings resulting in improved environmental tolerance, and cost reduction. Sophisticated and more complex features for safety and comfort such as chassis control and smart sensors are expected to be developed faster and more reliably and will likely become mainstream. Unfortunately, all these functionalities translate into higher performance (resource usage), reliability and maintainability requirements for future automotive systems. Further, suitable solutions must be developed under stringent cost constraints and provide the modularity to allow the interchangeable use of components from different vendors. The aim of the project is to provide for a hardware/software co-design to meet the cost, performance and dependability requirements of automotive communication subsystems. The key idea is to define a component based hardware/software infrastructure (architecture), metrics, and benchmarks to assess cost, performance and dependability aspects for an automotive application development. Interaction and composition standards for components will be defined and approved in order to assist a flexible ¿ and eventually even adaptive ¿ hardware/software allocation based upon otherwise contradictory non-functional requirements, which have to be traded against each other. We approach our solution starting with a profound analysis of recent industrial projects. Then a system infrastructure (architecture) for the hardware/software interface of the communication subsystem will be elaborated. A prototype implementation of relevant components in hardware and software, respectively, will serve as a show-case for further scientific assessments and application developments. To assess the properties of the system infrastructure, an automotive benchmark suite based on new metrics is specified, implemented, and applied. The contribution of the proposed project is threefold: First, the application of the component paradigm in the area of embedded automotive systems clearly extends the state of the art. Second, the trading of the non-functional requirements against each other to allow for a flexible hardware/software allocation is not very well presented in related scientific work and therefore considered highly innovative. Third, the project provides relevant exploitation scenarios as composition and interaction standards and design guidebooks will further provide OEMs and automotive suppliers with best practice use-cases for the optimization and development of future products based on this methodology.

People

Project leader

Project personnel

Institute

Grant funds

  • FFG - Österr. Forschungsförderungs- gesellschaft mbH (National) Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)

Research focus

  • Distributed and Parallel Systems: 100%

Keywords

GermanEnglish
Komponentencomponents
Automobilautomotive
Embeddedembedded
Hardware/Software Co-DesignHardware/Software Co-Design

External partner

  • Decomsys
  • FH Technikum Wien

Publications