Automated Architecture Recovery for Embedded Software Systems: An Industrial Case Study

The software architecture documentation of embedded systems is often overlooked in industry, due to time pressure, project budget constraints, and lack of culture. However, adequately documenting the architecture from different points of view is mandatory to reach the expected maintainability, testability, and safety requirements. This paper presents a software architecture recovery (SAR) process for automating the documentation process of embedded system software architectures. The approach uses static code analysis to extract detailed information about the systems and reconstruct architectural models. It has been implemented in a tool that automatically generates different UML models, including package diagrams, component diagrams, component and connector diagrams, and state machine diagrams. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we conducted a survey with industrial experts within Micron, that allowed us to assess the accuracy and usefulness of the generated documentation.