MADES: A SysML/MARTE high level
methodology for real-time and embedded systems
Imran Rafiq Quadri
∗
, Andrey Sadovykh
∗
∗
Softeam, 21 Avenue Victor Hugo,
75016 Paris, France
Email:{Firstname.Lastname}@softeam.fr
Leandro Soares Indrusiak
†
†
University of York,
York, United Kingdom
Email:lsi@cs.york.ac.uk
Abstract—Rapid evolution of real-time and embedded systems
(RTES) is continuing at an increasing rate, and new method-
ologies and design tools are needed to reduce design complexity
while decreasing development costs and integrating aspects such
as verification and validation. Model-Driven Engineering offers
an interesting solution to the above mentioned challenges and is
being widely used in various industrial and academic research
projects. This paper presents the EU funded MADES project
which aims to develop novel model-driven techniques to improve
existing practices in development of RTES for avionics and
surveillance embedded systems industries. MADES proposes a
subset of existing UML profiles for embedded systems modeling:
namely MARTE and SysML, and is developing new tools and
technologies that support design, validation, simulation and
eventual automatic code generation, while integrating aspects
such as component re-use. In this paper, we first introduce
the MADES language, which enables rapid system design and
specification that can be then taken by underlying MADES tools
for goals such as simulation or code generation. Finally, we
illustrate the various concepts present in the MADES language
by means of a car collision avoidance system case study.
Index Terms—Real-Time and Embedded Systems, Model-
Driven Engineering, SysML, MARTE, MADES language
I. INTRODUCTION
Embedded systems have become an essential aspect of
our professional and personal lives. From avionics, transport,
defense, medical and telecommunication systems to general
commercial appliances such as smart phones, gaming con-
soles; these systems with real time constraints: Real-Time
and Embedded Systems (RTES) are now omnipresent, and it
is difficult to find a domain where these miniaturized sys-
tems have not made their mark. The important characteristics
of RTES include: low power consumption, reduced thermal
dissipation and radiation emissions, among others; offering
advantages and new opportunities to integrate more powerful,
energy efficient processors, peripherals and related resources
into the system.
A. Motivations
However, as computing power increases, more function-
alities are expected to be realized and integrated into an
embedded system. Unfortunately, the fallout of this complexity
is that the system design (particularly software design) does
not evolve at the same pace as that of hardware due to issues
such as development budget limitations, reduction of product
life cycles and design time augmentation. Additionally, de-
velopment costs and time to market shoot up proportionally.
Without the usage of effective design tools and methodologies,
large complex RTES are becoming increasingly difficult to
manage, resulting in critical issues and what has finally led to
the famous productivity gap. The design space, representing
all technical decisions that need to be elaborated by the design
team is therefore, becoming difficult to explore. Similarly,
manipulation of these systems at low implementation levels
such as Register Transfer Level (RTL) can be hindered by
human interventions and the subsequent errors.
Thus effective design methodologies are needed to decrease
the productivity gap, while resolving issues such as related
to system complexity, verification and validation, etc. Among
several possibilities, elevation of design abstraction levels
seems the most promising one. High abstraction level based
system design approaches have been developed in this context,
such as Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) [1] that specify
the system using the UML (Unified Modeling Language)
graphical language.
B. Elevating design abstraction levels
MDE enables high level system modeling of both software
and hardware, with the possibility of integrating heteroge-
neous components into the system. It allows system level
(application/architecture) modeling at a high specification level
permitting several abstraction stages, each with a specific view
point. This Separation of Views (SoV) enables a designer
to focus on a domain aspect related to an abstraction stage
thus permitting a transition from solution space to problem
space. Using UML for system description increases the system
comprehensibility as it enables designers to provide high-
level descriptions of the system, that easily illustrate the
internal concepts (data dependencies, hierarchy, etc.). These
specifications can be reused, modified or extended due to their
graphical nature. Thus, MDE offers an interesting solution
to the above mentioned challenges and is being widely used
in various industrial and academic research projects. It is
supported by different technologies and tools such UML and
related profiles for high level system specifications. Moreover,
Model transformations [2] can then automatically generate
executable models or code from these abstract high level
design models.