A Library of Embedded Platform Components for the Simulation of Real-Time Embedded Systems

When modeling the control algorithm(s) of a Cyber-Physical System, control engineers evaluate if its behavior satisfies the specifications by executing a Model-in-the-Loop simulation. However, often the deployment of a control algorithm on an embedded system affects its behavior. Tools exist that include these deployment effects in the Model-in-the-Loop simulation. However, they require engineers to significantly modify existing control models to incorporate these effects at this (higher) abstraction level. As such, engineers are restricted in evaluating various deployment configurations. We created a library of configurable embedded components that enables an engineer to model the embedded platform at the same level of abstraction as the model of the control algorithm. Our method requires minimal changes to the modeled control algorithm so that evaluating its deployed behavior, using a co-simulation, is facilitated. We compared our co-simulation results with a deployed system and evaluated our approach with current state-of-the-art tools.