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We present extensions to the existing industrial component model Rubus Component Model (RCM). By introducing special purpose components to encapsulate and abstract the communication protocols in distributed embedded systems we allow use of legacy nodes and legacy protocols in a component-based and model-based software engineering environment. With the addition of these components, RCM will be able to support state-of-the-practice development processes of distributed embedded systems where communication rules are defined early in the development process. The proposed extension also allows model-based and component-based development of new nodes that are deployed in the legacy systems that use predefined communication rules. We also demonstrate how an end-to-end timing model can be extracted from a distributed embedded system modeled with extended RCM. The extracted model is then used to perform an end-to-end timing analysis that we implemented in the Rubus Analysis Framework.

The schedulability analysis of Controller Area Network (CAN) developed by the research community is able to compute the response times of CAN messages that are queued for transmission periodically or sporadically. However, there are a few high level protocols for CAN such as CANopen and HCAN (Hagglunds Controller Area Network) that support the transmission of mixed messages as well. A mixed message can be queued for transmission both periodically and sporadically. Thus, it does not exhibit a periodic activation pattern. The existing analysis of CAN does not support the analysis of mixed messages. We extend the existing analysis to compute the response times of mixed messages. The extended analysis is generally applicable to any high level protocol for CAN that uses any combination of periodic, event and mixed (periodic/event) transmission of messages.

In order to facilitate the end-to-end timing analysis early during the development of component-based distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems, we present the extraction of end-to-end timing models using the existing industrial component model, Rubus Component Model (RCM). Moreover, we discuss and solve the issues involved during the model extraction such as, extraction of timing information from all nodes and networks in the system, tracing of event chains in distributed transactions, and modeling of exit and entry points for RCM models to provide timing bounds for extra-model medium. We also describe the implementation of end-to-end timing model extraction in the Rubus Analysis Framework.

The process of implementing and integrating state-of-the-art real-time analysis techniques with an existing industrial tool suite for the development of Distributed Real-time Embedded (DRE) systems offers many challenges. The implementer has to not only code and implement the analysis in the tool suite, but also deal with several issues such as extraction of unambiguous timing and tracing information from the design model. In this paper we present an implementation of the Holistic Response-Time Analysis (HRTA) as a plug-in for an industrial tool suite Rubus-ICE that is used for component-based development of DRE systems. We discuss and solve the issues encountered and highlight the experiences gained during the process of implementation, integration and evaluation of HRTA plug-in. We also provide a proof of concept by modeling an automotive application (autonomous cruise control system) using component-based development and analyzing it with HRTA plug-in.