The Adaptation Mechanism of Chameleon - A Comprehensive Adaptive Middleware for Mixed-Critical Cyber-Physical Networks

The complexity of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is increasing due to the widespread availability of inexpensive hardware, sensors, actuators, and communication links. The complexity is further heightened in a network of cooperating CPSs (Cyber-Physical Network (CPN)), presenting both challenges and opportunities. Designing, operating, optimizing, and maintaining such CPNs becomes more difficult with rising complexity. However, judicious utilization of the expanding computational nodes, sensors, and actuators can significantly enhance system performance, reliability, and flexibility. Therefore, integrating self-X features such as self-organization, self-adaptation, and self-healing becomes crucial for these systems. In Addition, CPNs are typically mixed-critical systems, commonly employed in areas like avionics, automotive, and healthcare. The mixed-criticality nature introduces competition among applications with hard real-time constraints, those with soft real-time constraints, and best-effort applications for the available resources. This paper shortly introduces a comprehensive adaptive middleware (Chameleon) designed for CPNs and evaluates its effectiveness. The results demonstrate the capability of Chameleon in autonomously managing system resources to meet the required constraints of applications based on their criticality.