Continuous agile cyber–physical systems architectures based on digital twins

Abstract

Modern cyber-physical systems, for the most part, are large-scale multilevel heterogeneous distributed systems that integrate subsystems of different kinds and are built on the Internet of Things platforms, where system structure and behavior are not constant. Managing such systems and keeping them in working condition throughout their lifetime is a difficult task. The proposed article discusses one of the possible approaches to solving this problem, based on the use of well-known continuous and agile architecture paradigms. However, there are currently no effective mechanisms for implementing these paradigms. The proposed article suggests a new approach to implementing continuous agile architectures by utilizing digital twins and proposes a reference architecture for a run-time dynamic digital twin. This method is unique because it builds a series of dynamic digital twins that model the system in real time, utilizing data about system events. Build the first models using the models used in earlier stages of the system lifecycle. This gives the following opportunities: i) a way to use dynamic digital twins to implement the continuous agile architecture paradigm; ii) a generalized three-level model of the life cycle of the continuous agile architecture; iii) a reference architecture for dynamic digital twins; and iv) a set of models that are all about using dynamic digital twins. The suggested approach enables the management of heterogeneous multilevel cyber-physical systems with variable structure and behavior variability.