Development of building automation and control systems

A design flow for building automation has been proposed that focuses on two main aspects, heterogeneity and automation. The flow bridges the gap between a desirable design entry point at a high abstraction level using model-based design tools such as Simulink and Modelica and the available back-end tools. The flow enables the integration of heterogeneous input models from different high-level languages, allowing the interaction between domain experts. The back-end includes a set of tools that, given the specification of the control algorithms and a set of available resources, automatically refines the specification into an optimal distributed implementation. The front-end and the back-end exchange models using an intermediate format (IF). In the second step of the design flow, mapping is conducted to explore the design space, as explained in design space exploration in mapping. Through automatic extraction based on ANTLR, processes and channels are abstracted to tasks and messages, by hiding their internal implementation while computing cost and performance metrics of interest.