Translating Discrete Time SIMULINK to SIGNAL

Abstract

As Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are getting more complex and safety critical, Model Based Design (MBD), which consists of building formal models of a system in order to be used in verification and correct-by-construction code generation, is becoming a promising methodology for the development of the embedded software of such systems. This design paradigm significantly reduces the development cost and time while guaranteeing better robustness and correctness with respect to the original specifications, when compared with the traditional ad-hoc design methods. SIMULINK has been the most popular tool for embedded control design in research as well as in industry, for the last decades. As SIMULINK does not have formal semantics, the application of the model based design methodology and tools to its models is very limited. In this paper, we present a semantic translator that transforms discrete time SIMULINK models into SIGNAL programs. The choice of SIGNAL is motivated by its polychronous formalism that enhances synchronous programming with asynchronous concurrency, as well as, by the ability of its compiler of generating deterministic multi thread code. Our translation involves three major steps: clock inference, type inference and hierarchical top-down translation. We validate our prototype tool by testing it on different SIMULINK models.