Building safety-critical real-time systems with synchronous software components

In this paper a new method for the development of distributed safety-critical real-time systems is presented. The method is based on the synchronous approach for designing reactive systems and a time-triggered communication architecture. Synchronous software components consisting of a reactive and a transformational part are used to specify the behavior of the system. The reactive part of a synchronous component is specified in the synchronous language ESTEREL. In the design model, hardware and software components are composed graphically on a high level of abstraction. From the graphical design specification executable code can be generated automatically. Due to the synchronous execution model, the code is deterministic and can also be simulated and verified. Copyright (C) 1999 IFAC.