Design patterns for distributed automation systems with consideration of non-functional requirements

Abstract

The consequence of the increase of automation and therefore the growing complexity of automation tasks is a necessity for using distributed control architectures. This implicates a support for developers in the engineering of such distributed automation systems. For this reason, this paper focuses on the design support of distributed automation systems by use of design patterns. Important aspects are the consideration of non-functional requirements in design patterns and the integration of design patterns into the engineering workflow. This paper presents a design pattern template which supports developers with predefined automation functions which are assigned to a system function and in their selection of an appropriate distribution of automation functions, taking relevant non-functional requirements into account.