Model Interpretation for an AUTOSAR compliant Engine Control Function

Model-Based Development (MBD) is a common practice in the automotive industry to develop complex software, for instance, the control software for automotive engines, which are deployed on modern multi-core hardware architectures. Such an engine control system consists of different sub-systems, ranging from air system to the exhaust system. Each of these subsystems, again, consists of software functions which are necessary to read from the sensors and write to the actuators. In this setting MBD provides indispensable means to model and implement the desired functionality, and to validate the functional, the non-functional, and in particular the real-time behavior against the requirements. Current industrial practice in model-based development completely relies on generative MBD, i.e., code generation to bridge the gap between model and implementation. An alternative approach, although not yet used in the automotive domain is model interpretation, the direct interpretation of the design models using interpretation engine running on top of the hardware. In this paper, we present a case study to investigate the applicability of model interpretation, in contrast to code generation, for the development of engine control systems. To this end, we model an engine cooling system, specifically the calculation of the engine-coolant temperature, using interpreted model based development, and discuss the benefits and low-lights compared to the existing code generation practice.