Optimizing Functional distribution in Complex System Design

The purpose of this paper is to show that functionality distribution among embedded objects of a system architecture critically influences the quality of the resulting architecture. It is shown that gains can be achieved when functionality distribution is guided by optimization criteria, using an automatically generated centralized processing architecture. This architecture is modified in order to carry out distributed processing. Two alternatives are then used: first, functionality associated with data processing is removed from the processing class, to different external classes, manually. Second, the entire architecture is re-generated to comply with distributed processing. Object Oriented Paradigm and UML, in conjunction with an extension of data flow diagram (E-DFD) conveying timing information are used for system requirement formalization. SIMOORT is used as graphical interface for direct Use-Case and E-DFD diagram constructions and for simulation. SysObj is used for architecture generation and quality assessment. Resident Quality Metrics and Criteria are used. Metric values obtained for the different solutions prove that it is rewarding to carry out functionality distribution optimization.

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