Architecture Discovery and Analysis of Real-time Software

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This project is a collaboration under the NSF-FDA Scholar-In-Residence (SIR) program. The project focuses on computer-aided methods to facilitate the analysis of software properties of real-time cyber physical systems (CPS) by reverse architecting structures present in the source code. The new idea of this project is to extract and use elements from the source code in order to build architecture analysis and design language (AADL) models. These models are used to systematically evaluate emerging properties (e.g., safety, schedulability, end-to-end latency, and security) using AADL?s capability to analyze the software?s architecture. In practice, AADL models have to be built manually, which is tedious. In this project, a new bridge between AADL models and reverse-engineered architectural structures is sought so that AADL models can be built in an automated fashion. Using these models, implementations of real-time systems can be systematically analyzed for emergent properties using AADL.The broader impact of this project is that software-based CPS that leverage the contributions of this project are expected to be safer to use in our daily lives. From an engineering standpoint, the work enables organizations to evaluate software properties such as safety and security of real-time systems in less time due to new automation support. In addition, the project is developing a catalog of software structures that facilitate or impede real-time CPS system's safety. The catalog can be used by engineers to build in formally verified software structures at design time, thereby advancing the manner in which new CPS are built and analyzed.