Use Of Reference Architectures Research Articles

Architectures for Industrial AIoT Applications.

Industry 4.0 introduced new concepts, technologies, and paradigms, such as Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and, more recently, Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT). These paradigms ease the creation of complex systems by integrating heterogeneous devices. As a result, the structure of the production systems is changing completely. In this scenario, the adoption of reference architectures based on standards may guide designers and developers to create complex AIoT applications. This article surveys the main reference architectures available for industrial AIoT applications, analyzing their key characteristics, objectives, and benefits; it also presents some use cases that may help designers create new applications. The main goal of this review is to help engineers identify the alternative that best suits every application. The authors conclude that existing reference architectures are a necessary tool for standardizing AIoT applications, since they may guide developers in the process of developing new applications. However, the use of reference architectures in real AIoT industrial applications is still incipient, so more development effort is needed in order for it to be widely adopted.

Effective integration of low-cost digital manufacturing systems: a reference architecture driven approach

ABSTRACT Integration involves the systematic linking of system components, functions and solutions. For digital systems comprising low-cost components, integration enables the sharing of resources and allows them to benefit from each others functionalities. However, in general integrating low-cost systems can be difficult, since data are heterogeneous and distributed over multiple sources and there is no common interface to interact with resources. This study proposes the use of reference architectures as a means of supporting such integration needs. Reference architectures are models that provide a structured template with common terminology and support integration through a systematic, repeatable framework. In this paper, we evaluate strategies to integrate digital systems formed from the same reference architecture. We first select three reference architectures and use them to conceptually design the integration of two low-cost digital systems based on different strategies. Then, the conceptually designed strategies are evaluated in terms of their effectiveness to be realised at low cost. Finally, the most effective strategy is deployed for an industrially relevant application, and validated by comparing its effectiveness to a system architecture driven integration. The evaluation results suggest that coordinators with a common service bus and virtual data integration are effective for integrating low-cost digital systems.

Towards a Reference Architecture for Cargo Ports

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are physical systems whose operations are coordinated, monitored, and controlled by computing and communication functions. These systems are typically heterogeneous, including Internet of Things and information technology subsystems, and can present a myriad of implementation details, making them very complex systems. An important type of CPS is a maritime container terminal (cargo port), which is a facility where cargo containers are transported between ships and land vehicles for onward transportation and vice versa. A cargo port performs four basic functions: receiving, storing, staging, and loading for both import and export containers. We present here process patterns that describe the functional aspects of cargo ports and a pattern that describes their structural properties (patterns are encapsulated solutions to recurrent problems). These patterns describe semantic aspects found in any cargo port and can be adapted to describe other CPSs. We decompose these process patterns into use cases that describe their interactions with the system. We then integrate the process patterns with structural patterns to assemble a partial reference architecture (RA) that shows the interactions of all the patterns while also indicating the typical stakeholders found in all ports. We validate the proposed reference architecture, highlighting its theoretical and practical value. Software and system designers of cargo ports need to start from a conceptual and abstract view that is subsequently refined to add more details. The use of reference architectures and patterns is an effective way to organize and describe the functional and non-functional aspects of a system, as well as to unify the design of all its aspects. This is, until now, the only published RA for cargo ports, and it can be a useful guideline for the designers of any type of cargo port.

Development of Asset Administration Shell for the components of EBMR plant

The use of reference architectures and frameworks is an important prerequisite for dealing with the complexity, diversity and heterogeneity of cyber-physical systems. One of the most popular architectures is RAMI 4.0, suggested by the Industry 4.0 Working Group. According to RAMI 4.0, the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) is a digital copy of assets, an implementation of the digital twin for Industry 4.0. The paper represents a semantic approach for development of AAS, which presents the data model through ontology. The semantic model allows for the presentation of facts, data schemes and meta-data in a unified way, using a global identification scheme. An example from the development of AAS for I4.0 components of an EBMR plant illustrates the approach.

Agricultural Big Data Architectures in the Context of Climate Change: A Systematic Literature Review

Climate change is currently one of agriculture’s main problems in achieving sustainability. It causes drought, increased rainfall, and increased diseases, causing a decrease in food production. In order to combat these problems, Agricultural Big Data contributes with tools that improve the understanding of complex, multivariate, and unpredictable agricultural ecosystems through the collection, storage, processing, and analysis of vast amounts of data from diverse heterogeneous sources. This research aims to discuss the advancement of technologies used in Agricultural Big Data architectures in the context of climate change. The study aims to highlight the tools used to process, analyze, and visualize the data, to discuss the use of the architectures in crop, water, climate, and soil management, and especially to analyze the context, whether it is in Resilience Mitigation or Adaptation. The PRISMA protocol guided the study, finding 33 relevant papers. However, despite advances in this line of research, few papers were found that mention architecture components, in addition to a lack of standards and the use of reference architectures that allow the proper development of Agricultural Big Data in the context of climate change.

Agile Big Data Analytics for Web-Based Systems: An Architecture-Centric Approach

This article contributes an architecture-centric methodology, called AABA ( A rchitecture-centric A gile B ig data A nalytics), to address the technical, organizational, and rapid technology change challenges of both big data system development and agile delivery of big data analytics for Web-based Systems (WBS). As the first of its kind, AABA fills a methodological void by adopting an architecture-centric approach, advancing and integrating software architecture analysis and design, big data modeling and agile practices. This article describes how AABA was developed, evolved and validated simultaneously in 10 empirical WBS case studies through three CPR (Collaborative Practice Research) cycles. In addition, this article presents an 11th case study illustrating the processes, methods and techniques/tools in AABA for cost-effectively achieving business goals and architecture agility in a large scale WBS. All 11 case studies showed that architecture-centric design, development, and operation is key to taming technical complexity and achieving agility necessary for successful WBS big data analytics development. Our contribution is novel and important. The use of reference architectures, a design concepts catalog and architectural spikes in AABA are advancements to architecture design methods. In addition, our architecture-centric approach to DevOps was critical for achieving strategic control over continuous big data value delivery for WBS.

Core System Transformation and Big Data Re-Architecting

Core System Transformation and Big Data Re-Architecting