Microscopic traffic simulation is an invaluable tool for traffic research. In recent years, both the scope of research and the capabilities of the tools have been extended considerably. This article presents the latest developments concerning intermodal traffic solutions, simulator coupling and model development and validation on the example of the open source traffic simulator SUMO.

Static schedules are used in safety critical systems to achieve predictable, real-time behavior. While it was possible to construct static schedules manually for simple, single-core systems, the increase in complexity introduced by multi-core processors and the demand for flexible and dynamic engineering processes in the avionics domain, require a novel approach for their automatic generation. This paper describes ongoing trends in the avionics domain to further underline engineering constraints encountered, when introducing multi-core processors in a safety critical area. By focussing on the requirement of a predictable behavior, a model-based approach for the generation of static schedules for complex multi-core systems is presented. It incorporates the usage of external resources, which is essential to achieve deterministic resource access and real-time behavior on hardware architectures with multiple execution units

Abstract-In view of the aging society, intelligent devices pervading everyday life are faced with important challenges, such as the ease of use and the ease of configuration. The whole potential of using a body area network with several sensors to monitor vital functions of a human body can only be tapped, if the sensors used are highly specialized and tightly integrated to collaborate in a decentralized way and exhibit true plug-and-play behavior.Although the aspect of interconnecting vital sensors close to the human body bears a variety of technical challenges in itself, the development of the necessary abstraction layer in software to hide the heterogeneity of the highly specialized sensor boards is confronted with even higher challenges as these devices are often equipped with very limited resources to reduce power consumption. However, this abstraction layer is a necessary prerequisite to facilitate the development of software for a body area network with the previously mentioned characteristics.This paper presents the results of a study conducted to evaluate the performance and overhead of using web services on embedded devices to implement an abstraction layer for a body area network. In several experiments, two different implementations of the Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) were evaluated: the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework and the open-source DPWS-plugin from the Web Services for Devices initiative. These were used to measure absolute latencies and the "web service overhead" in the communication between three different types of resource-constraint devices.

Software-intensive embedded systems, especially cyber-physical systems, benefit from the additional performance and the small power envelope offered by many-core processors. Nevertheless, the adoption of a massively parallel processor architecture in the embedded domain is still challenging. The integration of multiple and potentially parallel functions on a chip—instead of just a single function—makes best use of the resources offered. However, this multifunction approach leads to new technical and nontechnical challenges during the integration. This is especially the case for a distributed system architecture, which is subject to specific safety considerations. In this paper, it is argued that these challenges cannot be effectively addressed with traditional engineering approaches. Instead, the application of the “correctness by construction” principle is proposed to improve the integration process.

The rising complexity of embedded control systems and their increasing application to automate safety-critical or mission-critical tasks present a challenge for established development methodologies and tools. Are they able to handle the growing system complexity without compromising either system efficiency or its correctness? This challenge is addressed by the "correctness by construction" engineering principle. It aims to formalize error-prone and cumbersome engineering tasks to ensure correctness as well as efficiency despite high levels of complexity. A major obstacle in applying this principle in practice lies in the necessary formalization of "constructive tasks" for which human engineers with creative minds are still predominantly responsible. The authors applied this principle to "mapping problems", which occur during the design of several real-world embedded control systems. The tool suite ASSIST was developed to automate the "mapping process" and demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. It takes textual specifications of a mapping problem and its constraints as input from the systems engineer and uses Constraint Programming to synthesize valid and optimized solutions. In this contribution, the experiences gained from modeling and solving large-scale mapping problems as part of the design of embedded control systems are described in detail.