HRC: Technical basis

Overall, HRC (Heterogeneous Rich Components) forms the foundations for a component based construction of complete virtual system models.

SPEEDS supports a unique concept of coarse grained integration of COTS tools via the meta-model, resting on the observation that mixing of modelling tools in industrial practice only occurs for well defined and encapsulated design units.

HRC meta-model is a open model model and has been constructed to seamlessly extend the capabilities of existing industry-specific system engineering meta-models like AUTOSAR and AADL.

To use the SPEEDS concepts in a cooperative environment – several teams using different tools – a common platform is needed to exchange data. The SPEEDS approach is based on three levels of representation of design entities (Figure 2):

1.      The upper level depicts the users’ view of design entities, as represented in COTS tools familiar to today’s designers in the market segments addressed by SPEEDS.

2.      The middle layer depicts a common meta-model (HRC), allowing a representation of design models independent from COTS tools in terms of rich component models.

3.      The lower level provides the SPEEDS semantic foundations that ensures the overall consistency of the SPEEDS approach and the basis for the analysis techniques developed during the project.

Figure 2: HRC (Click to enlarge)