Currently, I am an associate professor at the National School of Engineers of Sfax. I did my engineering and graduate studies at Telecom ParisTech. From October 2005 to November 2008, I was a member of the S3 research team in the Network and Computer Science department of Telecom ParisTech.

My Phd thesis title is "Configuration and Deployment of Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems using an Architecture Description Language". My supervisors are Laurent Pautet and Jérôme Hugues. I defended my thesis in November 2008. Here is a link to my Full Curriculum Vitae in french (Reduced version Here).

Currently, my research activities are undertaken inside the ReDCAD research team.

A first research axis is a continuation of my thesis work. Some distributed real time embedded systems (DRE) need to be configured dynamically while continuing to preserve correctness properties. A first step of this work consists of defining a modeling formalism which is able to express dynamic configuration and deployment propoerties. This formalism is inspired from the MARTE UML profile and from the AADL (Architecture Analysis & Design Language). A second step of this work is to design and implement an execution platform for dynamically configurable DRE systems.

A second research axis I am working on is the generation of aspect code from abstract aspect annexes integrated in an architectural model for real time embedded systems. This allows the separation of concerns in such systems and also to ensure a smooth integration of some non functional propoerties such as security, availability, etc.

The two research axes described above can be joined together under the research thematics Models@Runtime. This relatively recent thematics investigates ways to model the execution state of distributed real time embedded systems. Any change on the execution state of a system have to be reflected on its model. Reversely, any change or alteration on a model will cause a corresponding alteration on the execution state of the system.

Building distributed real-time embedded systems (DRE) is a tedious task. In addition, real-time applications must satisfy hard constraints to ensure they work correctly (meeting deadlines...). The use of architecture description languages aims at reducing the development cost of these applications. AADL (Architecture Analysis & Design Language) belongs to this family of languages. It uses the concept of "component" (hardware or software) whose well defined semantics makes possible the description of many aspects of DRE systems. The various constraints that must be met are integrated into the AADL model as properties. My thesis work exploits the features offered by AADL to specify the exact requirements of a DRE application and automatically generate its code. The production process that has been proposed (1) automatically produces the code to integrate the applicative components to the runtime platform, (2) automatically produces a significant part of the middleware components customised for the application and (3) automatically deploys the applicative and middleware components to get a system which is strongly dedicated to the application. In particular, the AADL executive is itself statically configured. The adopted approach reduces the development time and allows for an customised and analyzable code. The configuration and deployment (often separated from the development process) are now automated and integrated into the production chain.

During my thesis work, I developed and contributed to the development of several tools:

Ocarina: Ocarina is a tool suite written in Ada to manipulate AADL models. Ocarina can perform semantic analysis of AADL models, schedulability analysis (through the Cheddar tool) and formal verification (by generating Petri nets from AADL models and analyzing them with the CPN-AMI framework). Ocarina can generate distributed applications from their AADL models. My contribution to Ocarina was the development of the code generators to the PolyORB and PolyORB-HI middleware.

PolyORB: PolyORB is a "schizophrenic middleware". My main contribution to PolyORB was the development of its new IDL compiler: IAC. PolyORB is free software available for download from the site of AdaCore.

PolyORB-HI: PolyORB-HI is a middleware dedicated to critical systems (avionics, space, etc.). Most of the code of this middleware is generated automatically using the Ocarina tool suite.

For more details on my thesis work, you can download my thesis report.

See my Curriculum Vitae

This poster describes the contributions of Sihem Loukil's master's thesis work. It was presented at the NOTERE'2010 conference held in June 2010 in Tozeur, Tunisia.

This poster describes one of the contributions of Fatma Krichen's phd thesis work. It was presented at the NOTERE'2010 conference held in June 2010 in Tozeur, Tunisia.

This poster describes the Ocarina tool suite. It was presented at the RTSS'06 in December 2006 in Rio de Janeiro.

Ada95 : A very good Ada 95 tutorial for those who want to learn Ada.

A simplified graphic library I developed. This library can be used in lab sessions of languages C and Ada for CS-1 and CS-2 students to make them more concrete. There are binary archives for most of the popular UNIX-Like platforms. If you are interested in the source code, do not hesitate to e-mail me.

The thesis style sheet I designed when writing my Phd thesis report.