Heterogeneous modeling for automotive electronic control units using a CASE-tool integration platform

Up to 70 electronic control units (ECU's) serve for safety and comfort functions in a car. Communicating over different bus systems most ECU's perform close loop control functions and reactive functions and have to fulfill hard real time constraints. Some ECU's controlling on board entertainment/office systems are software intensive, incorporating millions of lines of code. The challenge for the design of those distributed and networked control units is to define all requirements and constraints, understand and analyze those manifold interactions between the control units, the car and the environment (driver, road, weather) in normal as well as stress situations (crash). To design within a development process which is concurrent and distributed between the automotive manufacturer and several suppliers requires a well understood life-cycle model, a strictly controlled design methodology and using computer aided engineering tools to its largest extent. We have developed the CASE-tool integration platform "generalstore" to support the design of automotive ECU's, however, generalstore is also used for the design of industrial automation systems and biomedical systems.