A virtual environment for remote testing of complex systems

Complex systems, realized by integration of several components or subsystems, pose specific problems to simulation environments. It is, in fact, desirable to simulate the complex system altogether, and not component by component, since the operation of the single part depends on the surrounding system and an early verification can prevent damages and save time for modifications. The availability of detailed and validated models of the single parts is therefore critical. This task may be difficult to achieve. In fact, in industrial applications, where a system can be a mix of different devices produced by different manufacturers, the physical device may not be accessible to the modeler for proprietary or safety concerns. Starting from this point, the idea of creating a virtual environment able to test the real single component remotely, employing simulators with remote signal processing capability, has been considered. In this paper a methodology for remote model validation is presented. The effectiveness of the approach is experimentally verified locally and remotely. For the remote testing, in particular, the physical device under test is located at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and the Virtual Test Bed model is located at the University of South Carolina.