A Model Driven Approach for Device Driver Development

In order to facilitate the development and maintenance of device drivers integrated into the operating system, a model driven approach is proposed in this pater for driver design and verification before codding. Architecture model and behavior model are created to illustrate both static and dynamic characteristics of device drivers, in company with device model and device-driver-O.S. interaction model that are used to describe the execution environment of device drivers. Principles and functions of these models are discussed in detail in the major part of the paper, together with a solution of how to perform model-level verification and code-level emulation. Formula descriptions are built up and methods are proposed to implement model-based design, verification and emulation. Finally, in the end of the paper, a UART device driver in the Linux system is taken as an example to show how to perform MDA methods in the development of device drivers.