Behavioral Compatibility of Simulink Models for Product Line Maintenance and Evolution

Abstract

Embedded software systems, e.g. automotive, robotic or automation systems are highly configurable and consist of many software components being available in different vari-ants and versions. To identify the degree of reusability be-tween these different occurrences of a component, it is nec-essary to determine the functional backward and forward compatibility between them. Based on this information it is possible to identify in which system context a component can be replaced safely by another version, e.g. exchanging an older component, or variant, e.g. introducing new fea-tures, to achieve the same functionality. This paper presents a model checking approach to de-termine behavioral compatibility of Simulink models, ob-tained from different component variants or during evolu-tion. A prototype for automated compatibility checking demonstrates its feasibility. In addition implemented op-timizations make the analysis more efficient, when the com-pared variants or versions are structurally similar. A case study on a driver assistance system provided by Daimler AG shows the effectiveness of the approach to au-tomatically compare Simulink components. 1.