Early Analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems using Co-simulation and Multi-level Modelling

The multi-disciplinary nature of the design of cyber-physical systems makes it hard to gain insight in the system behaviour early in the design process. Our aim is to allow the designers to analyse the integration of system components as well as the behaviour of the complete system in an early stage. This is achieved by creating abstract component models and refining them throughout the design process. After every refinement cycle, the models can be co-simulated to analyse the behaviour of the system, supporting design decisions. The co-simulation is created based on existing standards such as HLA and FMI and uses a domain-specific language to construct a co-simulation automatically. This approach is illustrated using a case study which resembles a confidential industrial case.