The steady growth in the number of electronic control units on the average vehicle and the complexity of the algorithms that reside on these controllers has resulted in one of the most significant initiatives in the automotive industry in years. AUTOSAR -the Automotive Open System Architecture -has united more than 100 companies, automobile manufacturers, suppliers and tool vendors to develop a standard architecture for electronic control units. By the end of 2006 Version 2.1 was released, and now OEMs as well as suppliers have started to develop and integrate AUTOSAR-compliant functionality and components into vehicles. This paper will focus on the approach and challenges faced by engineers developing AUTOSAR-compliant production code using Model-Based Design.
AUTOSAR is on the road. Many OEMs and suppliers have established processes that are project-proven, flexible, and efficient for developing AUTOSAR-compliant applications. These development processes require a variety of tools that support requirements management, system architecture development, Model-Based Design, and verification and validation. Hence, interoperability of these tools is essential for the completion of high-quality projects on time. Building an interface from one tool to the next is often insufficient because processes for production projects are typically more complex than a top-down or bottom-up flow. However, a tool chain must support iterative development across all phases. For example, when a change in customer requirements triggers modifications to the software architecture, definitions for components, runnables, interfaces, or ports all need to be updated accordingly. Alternatively, while modeling the functional design, an engineer may realize that additional sensor data requirements can trigger a change in the software architecture. AUTOSAR offers standardized formats that allow a consistent exchange of data between tools and development phases. To realize, test, and implement software components, software component description files can be exported from system architecture tools and imported into tools for Model-Based Design. The challenge of these processes is to ensure consistent data exchange between phases without losing or corrupting design information. This paper describes the interoperability of tools that support Model-Based Design and are used to create software architectures. Specifically, this paper shows the mechanisms defined by AUTOSAR and capabilities to verify and validate these designs at different stages in the workflow.
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