Abstract
BackgroundSystems-of-systems (SoS) are alliances of independent and interoperable software-intensive systems. SoS often support critical domains, being required to exhibit a reliable operation, specially because people’s safety relies on their services. In this direction, simulations enable the validation of different operational scenarios in a controlled environment, allowing a benchmarking of its response as well as revealing possible breaches that could lead to failures. However, simulations are traditionally manual, demanding a high level of human intervention, being costly and error-prone. A stimuli generator could aid in by continuously providing data to trigger a SoS simulation and maintaining its operation.MethodsWe established a model-based approach termed Stimuli-SoS to support the creation of stimuli generators to be used in SoS simulations. Stimuli-SoS uses software architecture descriptions for automating the creation of such generators. Specifically, this approach transforms SoSADL, a formal architectural description language for SoS, into dynamic models expressed in DEVS, a simulation formalism. We carried out a case study in which Stimuli-SoS was used to automatically produce stimuli generators for a simulation of a flood monitoring SoS.ResultsWe run simulations of a SoS architectural configuration with 69 constituent systems, i.e., 42 sensors, 9 crowdsourcing systems, and 18 drones. Stimuli generators were automatically generated for each type of constituent. These stimuli generators were capable of receiving the input data from the database and generating the expected stimuli for the constituents, allowing to simulate constituent systems interoperations into the flood monitoring SoS. Using Stimuli-SoS, we simulated 38 days of flood monitoring in little more than 6 h. Stimuli generators correctly forwarded data to the simulation, which was able to reproduce 29 flood alerts triggered by the SoS during a flooding event. In particular, Stimuli-SoS is almost 65 times more productive than a manual approach to producing data for the same type of simulation.ConclusionsOur approach succeeded in automatically deriving a functional stimuli generator that can reproduce environmental conditions for simulating a SoS. In particular, we presented new contributions regarding productivity and automation for the use of a model-based approach in SoS engineering.
Highlights
Systems-of-systems (SoS)1 are a set of interoperable systems called constituents joined together to accomplish complex missions [1,2,3,4]
Modelling and simulation (M&S) promote (i) a visual and dynamic viewpoint for SoS software architectures, reproducing stimuli the system can receive from a real environment, (ii) prediction of errors, diagnosing them and enabling corrections, and (iii) observation of expected and unexpected emergent behaviors of an SoS [27, 28]
SoS must be analyzed under a multitude of viewpoints, and these viewpoints can be distinguished into two families: static approaches, focusing on systems properties, and dynamic approaches, focusing on their behavior [23]
Summary
Systems-of-systems (SoS) are a set of interoperable systems called constituents joined together to accomplish complex missions [1,2,3,4]. Due to the critical nature of domains that SoS intend to support, SoS exhibit a noteworthy risk of causing damage, financial losses, and threats to human life They must be constructed to be trustworthy, i.e., their operation must be reliable so that people can rely on their services to accomplish their own missions correctly, without failing nor causing accidents, working as expected, and keeping their operation in progress [10,11,12]. SoS often support critical domains, being required to exhibit a reliable operation, specially because people’s safety relies on their services In this direction, simulations enable the validation of different operational scenarios in a controlled environment, allowing a benchmarking of its response as well as revealing possible breaches that could lead to failures. Spooky emergence is inconsistent with known properties of the SoS, not reproducible or subject to simulation (a natural emergence, such as life itself, not predicted)
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