Firmware Synthesis for Ultra-Thin IoT Devices Based on Model Integration

Developing firmware for ultra-thin Internet of Things (IoT) devices is challenging due to exceedingly limited hardware resources, increasing functional requirements, and rigorous time-to-market constraints prevalent in industry. Model-driven approaches are often used to tackle these challenges. In the IoT and embedded systems domains, highly specialized metamodels are employed in systems engineering, including the development of firmware. However, these metamodels exist in isolation, limiting the capabilities of model-driven activities. In this paper, we show how firmware synthesis for ultra-thin IoT devices can be enhanced by model integration which is realized by a novel unifying modeling language that aims at integrating the large number of dedicated metamodels. We demonstrate our approach with an industrial use case where we synthesize parts of the firmware for one of the sensor peripherals of an IoT device along with contracts enabling static code verification.