System Verification Throughout the Development Cycle

Over the last few years, more and more companies have reacted to increasingly complex software systems in modern vehicles by introducing development processes based on explicit software- and system architecture models. The success of this strategy depends on the ability to execute and simulate these models in all stages of the development process.
If such executable models are used from early on in the development process, errors and hazards can be identified immediately whenever new aspects of the overall system have been modeled. Many problems in the logical interconnection of functionalities could be found very early during vehicle specification by the manufacturer. Currently, such errors are often only found very late in the process after electronic control units (ECUs) implemented by suppliers are integrated by the manufacturer.
This article will use the dSPACE tool chain, including dSPACE’s latest product SystemDesk (Version 2.0), to outline possible implementations of these ideas and to show how these different techniques can be combined with each other and with other existing tools to form a consistent tool chain.