Component-Based Modeling and Integration of Automotive Application Architectures

The introduction of new propulsion technologies such as electric or hybrid drives imposes fundamental changes to the overall structure of the vehicle's electric and electronic system architecture. It also increases the need for cross-domain functionality, such as centralized energy management or the orchestration of mechanical braking and electric energy recuperation during deceleration. This leads to new challenges with respect to architecture development as interconnections between features are introduced that are not yet fully understood. The vehicle's system architecture evolves from towards a distributed multi-functional control system. Component oriented, model based approaches with multiple viewpoints have already proven being suitable in other domains to manage the dependencies between functionality by decomposing a system into a network of functional entities encapsulated in components. In this paper, we present a domain-specific component model to describe functional interdependencies as well as non-functional requirements needed to enable safe integration of software components in a centralized automotive ICT architecture. The model enables the composition of high-level functions and the definition of compatibility constraints. The approach is then applied to unveil feature interaction in a component architecture. This forms the foundation of a sound development and integration process for heavily interconnected functions. It also enables on-line product validation mechanisms to ensure functional integrity and safety as well as meeting of deployment constraints and timing requirements.