New design methodologies at higher abstraction levels are necessary to deal with the increasing complexity of modern embedded systems. As a consequence, new design paradigms must supersede traditional design methods to bridge the abstraction gap which often exists between specification and implementation. This paper examines several examples which evaluate the applicability of Esterel, a language with well-defined semantics for specification and verification of reactive control systems. Implementation size, performance and design effort were selected as measures to assess the benefits of this design approach in comparison to a traditional one.
Agile Development Methodology for Embedded Systems: A Platform-Based Design Approach