View-Centric Context Modeling to Foster the Engineering of Cyber-Physical System Networks

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems interact closely at runtime with their operational context, i.e., other systems, users, and external entities. Therefore, eliciting and documenting interactions with the operational context allows documenting rationales for design decisions, which is essential to define a system architecture that suits the system’s purpose. For cyber-physical systems acting in system networks, this task becomes challenging since these networks can change at runtime, because individual systems can leave or join a network spontaneously. Hence, it becomes impossible to predict at design time the operational contexts at runtime. To aid context analysis and specification of such systems, this paper contributes a solution approach where the context of a system is not defined based on a static system boundary but depends on the specific intended use. We propose a view-centric perception of the operational context to leverage the functionality of external systems. This allows differentiating between functionality offered by the cyber-physical system network as a whole and the functionality provided by each individual system. An evaluation with an industrial case example and industry collaboration shows that this approach allows making suitable assumptions of the operational context at design time to guide architecture decisions.