Mechanisms to handle structural variability in MATLAB/simulink models

Abstract

Systematically postponing variability binding is an important design concept in Software Product Line Engineering in order to increase flexibility. One major challenge is the technical implementation of respective binding mechanisms in different tool environments and artifacts. This work proposes variability and binding mechanisms for model-based development with Matlab/Simulink. The aim is the explicit representation of variability in order to support the development of generic architectures, and the binding of variability in development models before code generation. This means that it should not only be possible to describe variability, but also to derive concrete system models from the generic platform. We extend the pure::variants Connector for Simulink proposed by pure-systems GmbH and Daimler AG, which provides basic variability mechanisms. Based on common variability scenarios identified in industry, 3-layered templates are used to abstract the variability implementation. This abstraction simplifies the platform development process and hides variability mechanisms from the developers. Additionally, we introduce an approach to derive concrete system models by removing variability information and disabled functionality from the model. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.