Modern Software Architecture for Embedded Real-Time Devices: High Value, Little Overhead

Embedded devices are often tightly constrained by CPU power and memory size. As a consequence, developers of embedded software avoid any kind of design abstractions, thinking that they imply large overhead. This results in complex designs with high coupling between the individual entities. The code of such designs is then difficult to maintain or reuse. This article presents FASAlight, a component-based software architecture for embedded devices with a focus on three main quality attributes that support maintenance and reuse: modularity, reusability, and portability. This architecture can be effectively implemented even for low-end embedded devices and only implies at worst a 14% on CPU and small overhead on memory on a device with a 120MHz ARM CPU and 128 kB of RAM.