An Architectural Approach to Autonomics and Self-management of Automotive Embedded Electronic Systems

Embedded electronic systems in vehiclesare of rapidly increasing commercial importance forthe automotive industry. While current vehicularembedded systems are extremely limited and static,a more dynamic configurable system would greatlysimplify the integration work and increase quality ofvehicular systems. This brings in features likeseparation of concerns, customised softwareconfiguration for individual vehicles, seamlessconnectivity, and plug-and-play capability.Furthermore, such a system can also contribute toincreased dependability and resource optimizationdue to its inherent ability to adjust itself dynamicallyto changes in software, hardware resources, andenvironment condition. This paper describes thearchitectural approach to achieving the goals ofdynamically self-configuring automotive embeddedelectronic systems by the EU research projectDySCAS. The architecture solution outlined in thispaper captures the application and operationalcontexts, expected features, middleware services,functions and behaviours, as well as the basicmechanisms and technologies. The paper alsocovers the architecture conceptualization bypresenting the rationale, concerning the architecturestructuring, control principles, and deploymentconcept. In this paper, we also present the adoptedarchitecture V&V strategy and discuss some openissues in regards to the industrial acceptance.