Improving Quality in Embedded Software Development: The Impact of OSAL in Evolving Systems

Embedded software development often encounters significant challenges due to tight integration with specific operating systems (OS), and limited hardware availability. These constraints, which limit cross-platform portability, reusability and modularity, might increase complexities in all software development life cycle (SDLC) activities. To address these concerns, this paper introduces a customized Operating System Abstraction Layer (OSAL) called ASEL OSAL. This customized abstraction layer provides a unified interface by abstracting essential OS services, thereby enabling deployment of embedded applications across multiple OS platforms, including real time operating systems (RTOS), as well as well-known desktop environments such as Windows. In this paper, a real-world case study is presented by illustrating the significant practical benefits of integrating ASEL OSAL into a mission-critical embedded application. The findings revealed improvements in software quality factors, debugging efficiency, and development velocity by reducing dependency on target hardware.