An Embedded Software Development Framework for Internet of Things Devices

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper introduces an interesting embedded software development framework,  and the authors have done lots of work. The proposal is maybe meaningful. However, the paper fails to represent the idea with clear and logical expressions. The experimental methodology needs to be implemented to verify the innovativeness and effectiveness of the proposal. And the manuscript needs to be carefully revised in grammar etc. Considering the major weakness of the manuscript, I have to reject the current version.

  1. The paper lists three contributions in the introduction, but I think you just mention one main contribution: an embedded development framework with a code generator. 2. Researchers have proposed several methods, but you have not conducted comparative experiments with them to verify the innovativeness of the proposal. 3. The quality of the table and figures should be improved.

4. The typography on pages 5 to 7 is terrible.

Author Response

The authors acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by the reviewer. Attached there is a pdf file with our responses to each comment and suggestion. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well written work that presents a software framework to develop embedded systems, in particular IoT ones. The authors proposed the used of several universal wrappers to configure the main components of a micro-controller (ADC, GPIO, UART). The configuration tool can be used independently of the micro-controller selected among the ones supported by the framework.

The authors have evaluated several aspects in this approach. In the case of memory footprint or configuration speed the use of the framework is not good. Almost two times memory footprint is used when the configuration is made through the framework and at the same time the time needed is also more.

As the framework provides some checking tools, the development time is reduced as several errors are pointed out in an earlier moment of the software development cycle.

Up to now, the framework operates over two distinct micro-controllers. This is clearly an issue for the evolution of this software as a product, but considering it a proof of concept it is enough.

 

Author Response

The authors acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by the reviewer. Attached there is a pdf file with our responses to each comment and suggestion. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article presents an embedded development framework with a code generator for IoT applications. The efficiency and reliability of the obtained embedded software code have been evaluated in an appropriate way. Moreover, the article shows that the proposed framework (embedded development and code generation) reduces software development time and compiler errors.

The article is well-written and easy to read. However, there are certain limitations that should be addressed during the revision:

1. One of the major issues is the novelty of this work. The model-based development and the generation of target code from high-level code have been extensively explored in literature. Some of those techniques have also been cited in the article. However, many other model-based and code-generator frameworks exist for various applications and scenarios.

 

For example:

For serverless data-driven applications in cloud computing: “A Model-driven Framework for Serverless Data-driven Applications in Cloud Computing”, PLOS ONE, vol. 15, no.8, e0237317, August 2020.

For static and dynamic verification of the code: “A Unified Model Based Framework for the Simplified Execution of Static and Dynamic Assertions Based Verification”, IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 104407-104431, June 2020.

For Web User Interfaces : “Automated Model-based Test Case Generation for Web User Interfaces (WUI) from Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) Models”, IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 67331-67354, May 2019. 

Therefore, it is important to state the scope and novelty of the proposed work (explicitly)

2. The proposed framework should be compared with state-of-the-art in terms of various attributes such as Tool Support, Target Platform, etc.

3. The evaluation is made for a very simple IoT application. What about the performance of the proposed framework for real-life IOT applications ??

4. One of the major limitations is the working mechanism of the code generator. The provided details in the article describe how the code generator can be used for the generation of code. However, from a scientific point of view, the reviewer is more interested in the design (structure and behavior of the code generator) .

 

 

Author Response

The authors acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by the reviewer. Attached there is a pdf file with our responses to each comment and suggestion. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors have addressed the raised concerns. 

Article can be published in its current form.