Hardware dependent software : the bridge between hardware and software

Telecom equipment is composed of hardware and software components. Additionally, the test related software on the module, board and system level becomes a bigger relative part of the entire software content. This part gains importance as verification and integration complexity stays increasing at a high rate. This paper describes the characteristics of the embedded SW and more particularly of the hardware dependent software (HdS) design domain in telecom equipment, optimized for reusability, scalability and portability. A basic framework in UML of a generic hardware abstraction layer, from which an HdS platform can be instantiated for any such telecom system, is proposed.