Towards Component-Based Design and Verification of a µ-Controller

Model-driven and component-based software development seems to be a promising approach to handling the complexity and at the same time increasing the quality of software systems. Although the idea of assembling systems from pre-fabricated components is appealing, quality becomes a major issue, especially for embedded systems. Quality defects in one component might not affect the quality of the component but that of others. This paper presents an integrated, formal verification approach to ensure the correct behavior of embedded software components, as well as a case study that demonstrates its practical applicability. The approach is based on the formalism of abstract components and their refinements, with its focus being on interaction behavior among components. The approach enables the identification of unanticipated design errors that are difficult to find and costly to correct using traditional verification methods such as testing and simulation.

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