AUTOSAR Standard

In this chapter, we describe the role of the AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) standard in the development of automotive system architectures. AUTOSAR defines the reference architecture and methodology for the development of automotive software systems, and provides the language (meta-model) for their architectural models. It also specifies the architectural modules and functionality of the middleware layer known as the basic software. We start by describing the layers of the AUTOSAR reference architecture. We then describe the proposed development methodology by identifying major roles in the automotive development process and the artifacts they produce, with examples of each artifact. We follow up by explaining the role of the AUTOSAR meta-model in the development process and show examples of the architectural models that instantiate this meta-model. We also explain the use of the AUTOSAR meta-model for configuring basic software modules. We conclude the chapter by showing trends in the evolution of the AUTOSAR standard and reflect on its future role in the automotive domain.