Cyber-physical systems: Modeling, simulation, design and validation

Abstract

Summary form only given: Cyber-physical system is a new term to denote systems with strongly coupled computational (cyber) units and physical systems. Different knowledge domains are involved in this context such as electronic system design, software engineering, control theory, and real-time systems. A further important aspect of cyber-physical systems is communication which represents the links among sensors, computational units and actuators.The tutorial will introduce to various aspects of modeling, simulation, design and validation of heterogeneous cyberphysical systems involving discrete and continuous components, but will particularly focus on the communication aspects of cyber-physical systems. It will overview the relevant research results and literature, and will discuss several examples taken from tele-operation, transportation, energy management, healthcare and complex machines. The lecture will introduce the most important issues and challenges in the development of cyber-physical systems and how these crucial aspects can be addressed in the design flow. Then an overview of modeling, simulation and verification of cyber-physical systems will be provided. In particular, the lecture will describe different techniques to simulate complex cyber-physical systems. The lecture will present advantages and disadvantages of each technique also from the perspective of computational demand. In particular, a novel approach to speed-up simulation is represented by model abstraction which reduces useless details while preserving the aspects of interest. A case study taken from SMAC European project will be used; in this case study a digital component, described in VHDL or Verilog, interacts with a continuous-time component described in Agilent's System Vue; we will compare VHDLlSystem Vue co-simulation provided by Modelsim with SystemC/SystemVue co-simulation (with SystemC/RTL or TLM automatically generated by HIFSuite) and pure SystemVue simulation (with C++ models automatically generated by HIFSuite). Most results presented in this lecture come from the research activities inside the SMArt systems Co-design (SMAC) European project. SMAC aims at designing smart systems by using multi-disciplinary and multiscale modeling and design techniques, simulation of multiple domains (i.e., digital, analog, thermal, power, radiofrequency, mechanical), subsystems and components at all levels of abstraction, system integration and exploration for optimization of specific metrics, such as power, performance, reliability and robustness.