ANSI C CODE SYNTHESIS FOR MLDESIGNER FINITE STATE MACHINES

The complexity of systems using electronics increases rapidly, causing severe problems in the validation of this systems. Formal specification methods have to be included in the design flow, in order to achieve validation by design, to increase reliability, and to reduce development time and costs. Finite state machines (FSMs) are an important specification methodology to describe re-active system processes, starting from system and mission level design to the partitioning layer of hardware/software co-design. This paper describes automated ANSI C code synthesis for FSMs of the system design tool MLDesigner and shows, how automated code generation can be used to enable a seamless design flow. In section 1, the major semantic features of MLDesigner FSMs are introduced. An appropriate ANSI C code generator is described in section 2, including necessary trade-offs as well as evaluation of standard implementation techniques. In section 3, the design of a controller for a LEGO Mindstorms robot examplifies the usage of the implemented code generator. Finally, section 4 draws conclusion about achieved results