Sustainable Embedded Software Life-Cycle Planning

Time to market is a crucial factor in increasing market share in consumer electronics. Furthermore, fierce market competition tends to sharply lower the prices of new consumer electronics products as soon as they're released. Researchers have studied software-intensive embedded system design methods, such as hardware/software co-design, with the goal of reducing development lead time by designing hardware and software simultaneously. However, most studies concentrate on static design methods, in which a design remains unchanged once it's determined. To survive the market competition in consumer electronics requires a dynamic design strategy that takes various market conditions into account for software-intensive embedded systems. This article proposes a sustainable embedded software life-cycle planning (SeSLP) process based on the evolution of embedded software. The SeSLP process provides a dynamic method for both selecting product life-cycle design alternatives and generating a profit-maximizing transition plan that covers the entire product life cycle. © 1984-2012 IEEE.