Embedded Software for SoC - Grupo de Mecatrônica EESC/USP

Chapter 9
A FLEXIBLE OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE
ARCHITECTURE FOR SMART WIRELESS
COMMUNICATION DEVICES
Marco Götze
Institut für Mikroelektronik- und Mechatronik-Systeme (IMMS) gGmbH, Ilmenau, Germany
Abstract. This chapter describes the design considerations of and conclusions drawn from a
project dealing with the design of a software architecture for a family of so-called smart wireless
communication devices (SWCDs). More specifically, based on an existing hardware platform,
the software architecture was modeled using UML in conjunction with suitable framework and
product line approaches to achieve a high degree of flexibility with respect to variability at
both the hardware and application software end of the spectrum. To this effect, the overall design
was split into a middleware framework encapsulating specifics of the underlying hardware
platform and OS, and product line modeling of applications on top of it.
Key words: communications, frameworks, product lines, UML, SWCDs
1. INTRODUCTION
As is the case in about all areas of IT, the communications industry is in the
firm grip of a trend towards growing complexity of products while components
are being miniaturized. This is reflected by complex products of often
astonishingly small dimensions, such as cell phones or PDAs.
Yet besides these consumer-oriented gadgets, there is a class of devices of
similar functionality and complexity: the class of so-called smart wireless
communication devices, short SWCDs.
As the name implies, a common, defining aspect of these devices consists
in their ability to communicate with their environment by wireless means.
Furthermore, they expose a certain “intelligence,” i.e., they are characterized
by a certain complexity on the one hand and autonomy with respect to their
functionality on the other hand.
Areas of application of SWCDs are many and diverse, ranging from pure
telematics to security applications to remote diagnosis and monitoring. A
typical application example consists in fleet management, as will be dealt with
in more detail later on.
Despite the vastly different fields of application, all SWCDs share a number
of specific characteristics and resulting design challenges: their ability to
communicate with their environment, their autonomous functionality, their
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A Jerraya et al. (eds.), Embedded Software for SOC, 111–124, 2003.
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.