SEKE 2012 Proceedings - Knowledge Systems Institute

following research questions (RQ) were established: (i) RQ
1: What is the current state of the adoption of AOP in the
development of embedded systems? (ii) RQ 2: How AOP
has been used in the embedded system development? (iii)
RQ 3: What are the benefits and limitations by using AOP
in embedded systems?
Search Strategy: In order to establish the search strategy,
we identified then initially specific keywords for the two
research fields: AOP and Embedded System. Thus, for AOP
field, we identified the terms “AOP”, “AO”, “crosscutting
concern”, and “cross-cutting concern”. Following, we found
synonyms for these keywords: “aspect oriented programming”,
“aspect oriented software”, “aspect oriented application”,
“aspect oriented app”, “aspect oriented program”,
“aspect orientation”, and “aspect-based”. According to the
systematic review specialist, a technological term “AspectJ”
was included. Furthermore, for Embedded Systems field, the
following keywords were used: “reactive system”, “real-time
system”, “embedded”, “cyber-physical system”, “pervasive
system”, “ubiquitous system”, “wearable computer”, and
“consumer electronic”. In addition to the search string, we
selected larger publications databases as sources of primary
studies: IEEE Xplore 1 , ACM Digital Library 2 , Springer
Link 3 , Scirus 4 , ScienceDirect 5 , and SCOPUS 6 .
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria: Two basic parameters
that play an important role at the systematic review planning
is to define the Inclusion Criteria (IC) and Exclusion Criteria
(EC): (i) IC 1: The primary study explore the use of AOP in
the embedded system development; (ii) IC 2: The primary
study presents how AOP has been used in the embedded
system development; and (iii) IC 3: The primary study
presents benefits and limitations provided by the use of
AOP in embedded systems; (iv) EC 1: The primary study
does not address AOP in embedded system development;
(v) EC 2: The primary study presents an abstract and/or an
introductory section that seem related to AOP in embedded
system development; however, the rest of the text is not in
fact related to; and (vi) EC 3: The primary study does not
present any abstract or it is not available for further reading.
Data Extraction and Synthesis Method: To extract data,
we use control tables to each research question. These
tables summarize results aiming at facilitating to obtain
conclusions. The data of each primary study will be independently
extracted by two reviewers. If disagreement occurs,
discussion will be conducted.
1 http://www.ieeexplore.ieee.org
2 http://www.portal.acm.org
3 http://www.springer.com/lncs
4 http://www.scirus.com/
5 http://www.sciencedirect.com
6 http://www.scopus.com
B. Step 2: Systematic Review Conduction
The search by primary studies was conducted according
to previously established planning. This identification was
made by looking for all primary studies that match with
the search string on the selected databases. As result, a
total of 297 studies were identified, all studies were considered
primary even in the event of repetition between the
databases, in order to identify the relevance of each database,
as shown in Table I. Following, through reading of abstracts
and application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 104
studies were then selected to be fully read. At the end, 25
studies, summarized in Table II, were considered as relevant
to our systematic review. Following, a more detailed analysis
was conducted on the 25 primary studies included in our
systematic review and data were extracted.
Table I
DATABASE RELEVANCE
Database Obtained Included Percentage Index
IEEE 44 10 22.7%
ACM 77 6 7.8%
Scopus 79 5 6.3%
Springerlink 17 1 5.9%
ISI Web 11 1 9.0%
Scirus 69 2 2.9%
C. Step 3: Systematic Review Reporting
The systematic review provides us a perspective of how
AOP has been explored in embedded system development.
Through primary studies included in our systematic review,
we have identified six research areas: OOP versus AOP
when used in embedded system development (S2, S8, S10,
S23 and S24), AOP used at distributed embedded systems
(S1, S2, S5, S6, S9, S12, S22, S23, S24 and S25), AOP
used in consumer electronics (S8, S10, S24 and [11] by
specialist recommendation), AOP used in software development
process for embedded systems (S1, S9 and S23),
SoC used in the architectures of embedded systems (S1, S5,
S11, S18, S24 and S25), and AOP for real-time embedded
systems (S2, S4, S5, S6, S9, S10, S11, S12, S15, S17, S20,
S22 and S23). We have also examined the maturity of the
ideas and concepts, as well as the status of their applications
by looking into the research methods used in each study’s
validation. It is also observed that the primary studies related
to AOP in the context of embedded systems are concentrated
in the last years. Figure 2 shows the number of primary
studies distributed through the years.
The research area which aggregates the most number of
studies is the use of AOP on real-time embedded systems;
two main studies present different initiatives to apply AOP:
[1] and [4]. The work of Beuche et. al [1] show the
use of AOP on the operational system layer, exploring
customization and reuse. The usage of aspects imprints the
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