Systematic test of time-triggered communication architectures using a component-based approach

Since several years the automotive industry strives for dealing with the fast growing system complexity, the increasing safety requirements and the increasing cost constraints of electronic components. In this work, we focus on two approaches: the time-triggered architecture which precisely specifies the system and its components both in the value and in the time domain, and component-based development which provides a framework for describing the system structure in a formalized way. We discuss in this paper the relationships between these two concepts and review methods for performing analysis and validation on top of component-based development frameworks. This combination is illustrated by a method for layered test and diagnosis for FlexRay communication architectures.