New Methods of Debugging and Testing Improve the Software Quality of AUTOSAR ECUs

摘要

The development of ECU software has been the focus of improvement since its widespread inception in the late 1970's. Since that time, we have seen the transition from assembly language to higher level languages, like C, to higher levels of abstraction with the use of MATLAB to build C language constructs. One of the areas that had not changed significantly is the methods used to evaluate, validate and verify performance. In many applications, software has been validated on the bench using the generated code in conjunction with the target ECU and some sort of I/O simulation technique. In other applications, such as AUTOSAR, software components may be developed and tested in a virtual environment on a PC and later transferred to the target ECU for functional testing in a simulated environment on the bench. In this paper, the concepts for two new tools are presented. The first concept describes an emulation platform that automatically configures the AUTOSAR Run Time Environment (RTE) and Basic Software (BSW) to test the performance of AUTOSAR software components using traditional techniques or cycle by cycle in the virtual environment. Because software is usually available for a target ECU long before the production hardware is available, the use of such an emulator to execute target ECU binaries provides an understanding of system behavior and aids in identification and resolution of performance issues before they are encountered in the vehicle. The second concept is a monitoring and debugging platform for AUTOSAR software components that reside on a target ECU. It will leverage the information contained in the AUTOSAR Run Time Environment (RTE) and Basic Software (BSW) to gage the performance of a Software Component (SWC) and assist in debugging any anomalies discovered at this level.