Modeling Time(s)

Authors

Charles André, Frédéric Mallet, Robert de Simone

Abstract

Time and timing features are an important aspect of modern electronic systems, often of embedded nature. We argue
here that in early design phases, time is often of logical (rather than physical) nature, even possibly multiform. The
compilation/synthesis of heterogeneous applications onto heterogeneous architecture platforms then largely amounts to
adjusting the former logical time(s) demands onto the latter physical time abilities. Many distributed scheduling techniques
pertain to this approach of “time refinement”.
We provide an extensive Time metamodel that opens the possibility to cast this approach in a Model-Driven Engineering
light. Then, meaningful transformations can extend allocation, as defined in SysML, to timed models. Time modeling also
allows for a precise description, in a OCL-like fashion, of timed properties of events and clocks (periodic, sporadic,
bounded jitter,...). Finally, Time can be interpreted to control the system dynamics, unlike other proposals based on
uninterpreted stereotype annotations.
This report starts with a presentation of the “Time” and “Allocation” sub-profiles of the UML profile for Marte.
Their use is illustrated on a communication example borrowed from the AADL standard. This study highlights semantic
variations between immediate and delayed communications, and provides a generalization.

Key words

UML profile, real-time embedded systems, time modeling, time constraints.

Reference

I3S RR-2007-16

 

@TECHREPORT{tr-i3s-Models07Ext,
AUTHOR = "C. André, F. Mallet, R. de Simone",
title = {Modeling Time(s) in UML},
YEAR = {2007},
INSTITUTION = "I3S",
MONTH = {May},
ADDRESS = {Sophia-Antipolis, (F)},
NUMBER = { RR-2007-16},
NOTE = {\url{http://www.i3s.unice.fr/%7Emh/RR/2007/RR-07.16-C.ANDRE.pdf}}
}


Paper

pdf, 390KB (24 pages)