Application Engineering for Embedded Systems - Transforming SysML Specification to Simulink within a Product-Line based Approach

The evolution of hardware platforms has transferred a great amount of functionality to embedded software, thus increasing its complexity. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and Software Product Line (SPL) can enhance the development of complex embedded systems by using different specification languages according to the abstraction levels and controlling variability across development. The SyMPLES approach allows the creation of SysML-based SPLs. It includes two SysML extensions, created by means of the UML profiling mechanism both to express SPL variability concepts and to associate SysML blocks to the main classes of functional blocks. This paper presents the transformation process from SysML to Simulink models. SysML models, created in the SPL application engineering activity of SyMPLES, are used to generate functional blocks and state machines in Simulink. An application example was developed for one subsystem of an autopilot board used in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, named Yapa 2 of Paparazzi project, which was studied into the context of National Institute of Science and Technology for Safety Critical Embedded Systems (INCT-SEC).