Devising Guidelines and Architecture for Efficient Auto-Generation of HIS Compliant Code

Ensuring compliance with the ISO 26262 automotive functional safety standard involves meeting specific quality and complexity standards for automotive source code. However, achieving compliance becomes challenging when dealing with auto-generated code, as the code generator may not consider the required product metrics. This often leads to high metric values that exceed the permissible range. Assessing the impact of design on Hersteller Initiative Software (HIS) metrics within the visual modeling environment becomes difficult, with metrics reports only available after code generation. This makes it hard to achieve compliance through model reworking and regeneration. To address this problem, a methodology is proposed. It defines modeling guidelines and an architecture for generating HIS-compliant code. The HIS metrics are translated into corresponding model implementations, such as mapping the “Number of Function Parameters” metric to the number of subsystem ports and the guideline recommends dividing the logic into subsystems with fewer than five ports to meet the allowable range. The aim is to establish similar modeling guidelines for each attribute and create a balanced skeletal architecture diagram that ensures compliance with HIS metrics. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed guidelines, two models calculating steering motor torque are compared—one designed with the guidelines and one without. By separating decision points into distinct functions, the proposed approach reduces cyclomatic complexity, with all other HIS metrics expected to fall within the acceptable range. Adhering to the guidelines enables auto-generated code to meet HIS metrics, facilitating more efficient automotive software design.