16252718
QoSPL: A QoS-Driven Software Product Line Engineering Framework for Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems
The current synergy of Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) and Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) requires evolution to facilitate Distributed Realtime and Embedded (DRE) system construction. Such evolution is driven by inherent Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics in DRE systems. This paper introduces a QoSdriven SPLE framework (QoSPL) as an analysis and design paradigm for constructing a set of DRE systems as a product line. Leveraging separation of concerns, DRE systems are analyzed and designed by a collection of QoS systemic paths, each of which individually determines how well the service performs along the path and as a whole represents a behavioral view of software architecture. The paradigm reduces construction workload from the problems of tangled functional and QoS requirements and abundant infeasible design alternatives, and offers a less subjective QoS evaluation. The adopted formalisms also facilitate high-confidence DRE product line construction.
7160160
QoS-UniFrame: a Petri net-based modeling approach to assure QoS requirements of distributed real-time and embedded systems
Assuring quality of service (QoS) requirements is critical when assembling a distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) system from a repository of existing components. This paper presents a two-level approach for assuring satisfaction of QoS requirements in the context of a reduced design space for DRE systems. A dynamic and parallel approach is introduced to prune off the infeasible design spaces at the first level. Evolutionary algorithms cooperating with a domain-specific scripting language then discard less probable design spaces using statistics. These techniques fulfill the collective objectives of pruning and assuring the design space at system assembly time.
1399991
Validation of Distributed Real-Time and Embedded System composition in UniFrame
Distributed Real-Time and Embedded (DRE) Systems are widely applied to large scale and mission critical application domains such as avionics systems and medical imaging. Due to the rapid lifecycle and the complexity of design of the systems, there is an urgent demand to manage the development of robust, COTS, and effective software for vendors. The UniFrame project is a unified framework for seamless integration of distributed heterogeneous software components. This paper describes how the UniFrame approach is applicable to DRE software components. Leveraging the Two-Level Grammar (TLG) specification language and the Vienna Development Method (VDM), a formal methodology for developing DRE components and system code generation is developed for UniFrame.
7866306
Two-level assurance of QoS requirements for distributed real-time and embedded systems
Assuring quality of service (QoS) requirements is critical when assembling a distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) system from a repository of existing software and hardware components. This paper presents a two-level approach for assuring satisfaction of QoS requirements in the context of a reduced design space for DRE systems. Techniques from artificial intelligence and statistics are used to fulfill these collective objectives at system assembly time. The result not only lessens the overhead of validation of QoS requirements at run-time, but also reduces the development and integration cost of DRE systems.
18135743
A clustering entropy-driven approach for exploring and exploiting noisy functions
Linear, Gaussian, fitness proportional, clustering, and Rosca entropies are succinct measures of diversity that have been applied to balance exploration and exploitation in evolutionary algorithms. In previous studies, an entropy-driven approach using linear entropy explicitly balances and/or searches optimal solutions for the selected unimodal and multimodal functions excluding noisy functions. This paper investigates the reasons for such an exception and introduces a clustering entropy-driven approach to solve the problem. Such an approach provides a coarse-grained diversity measure that filters the noise of functions, varies cluster size and categorizes individuals at the genotype level. The experimental results show that the clustering entropy-driven approach further improves the searching results of noisy functions by one more degree.
14314870
Formalization, Testing and Execution of a Use Case Diagram
Errors in a requirements model have prolonged detrimental effects on reliability, cost, and safety of a software system. It is very costly to fix these errors in later phases of software development if they cannot be corrected during requirements analysis and design. A use case diagram, as a requirements model, plays an important role in giving requirements for a software system. It provides a communication tool between software requirements developers and prospective users to understand what requirements of a software system are. However most descriptions of a use case diagram are written in some informal language, leading to possible misunderstanding between developers and users. In this paper, we propose a new rigorous review technique which can be applied to software requirements models. Using this new technique before a software system is fully designed will help us find some potential errors in a requirements model, resulting in reduced time, labor and expenditure in software development.
3186847
A Hardware/Software Framework for Real-Time Spiking Systems
One focus of recent research in the field of biologically plausible neural networks is the investigation of higher-level functions such as learning, development and modulatory functions in spiking neural networks. It is desirable to explore these functions in physical neural network systems operating in real-time. We present a framework which supports such research by combining hardware spiking neurons implemented in analog VLSI (aVLSI) together with software agents. These agents are embedded in the spiking communication of the network and can change the parameters and connectivity of the network. This new approach incorporating feedback from active software agents to aVLSI hardware allows the exploration of a large variety of dynamic real-time spiking network models by adding the flexibility of software to the real-time performance of hardware.
60118681
Efficiency and throughput analysis of Dly-ACK in WPANs.
14203644
Word sense disambiguation in queries
This paper presents a new approach to determine the senses of words in queries by using WordNet. In our approach, noun phrases in a query are determined first. For each word in the query, information associated with it, including its synonyms, hyponyms, hypernyms, definitions of its synonyms and hyponyms, and its domains, can be used for word sense disambiguation. By comparing these pieces of information associated with the words which form a phrase, it may be possible to assign senses to these words. If the above disambiguation fails, then other query words, if exist, are used, by going through exactly the same process. If the sense of a query word cannot be determined in this manner, then a guess of the sense of the word is made, if the guess has at least 50% chance of being correct. If no sense of the word has 50% or higher chance of being used, then we apply a Web search to assist in the word sense disambiguation process. Experimental results show that our approach has 100% applicability and 90% accuracy on the most recent robust track of TREC collection of 250 queries. We combine this disambiguation algorithm to our retrieval system to examine the effect of word sense disambiguation in text retrieval. Experimental results show that the disambiguation algorithm together with other components of our retrieval system yield a result which is 13.7% above that produced by the same system but without the disambiguation, and 9.2% above that produced by using Lesk's algorithm. Our retrieval effectiveness is 7% better than the best reported result in the literature.
18927685
Developing Quality Software Systems Using the SOFL Formal Engineering Method
Formal Engineering Methods are a bridge from Formal Methods to industrial applications. In this paper I describe the relation between formal engineering methods and formal methods, and present a specific formal engineering method SOFL (Structured Object-Oriented Formal Language) for developing quality software systems. I explain how SOFL can be applied in practice through examples.