Using Model-Driven Engineering to Complement Software Product Line Engineering in Developing Software Defined Radio Components and Applications

This paper details the application of software product lines (SPL) and model-driven engineering (MDE) to the software defined radio domain. More specifically it is an experience report emphasizing the synergy resulting from combining MDE and SPL technologies. The software defined radio domain has very unique characteristics as its systems typically are a confluence of a number of typically challenging aspects of software development. To name a few, these systems are usually described by modifiers such as, embedded, real-time, distributed, object-oriented, portable, heterogeneous, multithreaded, high performance, dynamic, resource-constrained, safety-critical, secure, networked, component based and fault-tolerant. Each one of these modifiers by themselves carries with it a set of unique challenges but building systems characterized by all of these modifiers all at the same time makes for quite an adventure in software development. In addition to all of these, it is quite common in these embedded systems for components to have multiple implementations that must run on disparate processing elements. With all of this taken into account, it stands to reason that these systems could and should benefit greatly from advances in software technology such as product line engineering, domain-specific modeling and model-driven engineering. It is our experience that one big boon to the software development industry is the combination of the software product lines and model driven engineering technologies.