Utilizing Intervals in Component-Based Design of Cyber Physical Systems

Within the design of Cyber Physical Systems, model-based approaches are powerful means to describe and test the behavior of the system. Still, a good methodology is needed to go from the idealized model environment to an implementable system architecture that is capable of dealing with uncertainties in both the physical and the cyber subsystem. This paper presents a concept that explicitly utilizes intervals to express uncertainties in the physical system, the control process and the cyber system to improve the robustness and stability of the design. This interval concept has been integrated in a component-based framework that allows one to describe properties of the components out of which the CPS is composed. With a prototype implementation of the component framework, this paper shows the usefulness of this approach for an exemplary CPS. The results indicate the practical benefits of value intervals for property assessment of composed CPSs which can be exploited at design time as well as run time.