A Gateway to Easily Integrate Simulation Platforms for Co-Simulation of Cyber-Physical Systems

Published

April 10, 2018

Author(s)

Thomas P. Roth, Martin J. Burns

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) research leverages the expertise of researchers from multiple domains to engineer complex systems of interacting physical and computational components. An approach called co-simulation is often used in CPS conceptual design to integrate the specialized tools and simulators from each of these domains into a joint simulation for the evaluation of design decisions. Many co-simulation platforms are being developed to expedite CPS conceptualization and realization, but most use intrusive modeling and communication libraries that require researchers to either abandon their existing models or spend considerable effort to integrate them into the platform. A significant number of these co-simulation platforms use the High Level Architecture (HLA) standard that provides a rich set of services to facilitate distributed simulation. This paper introduces a simple gateway that can be readily implemented without co-simulation expertise to adapt existing models and research infrastructure for use in HLA. An open-source implementation of the gateway has been developed for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) co-simulation platform called the Universal CPS Environment for Federation (UCEF).

Proceedings Title

2018 Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems

Conference Dates

April 10, 2018

Conference Location

Porto

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/MSCPES.2018.8405394

Keywords

co-simulation, cyber-physical systems, functional mock-up interface, high level architecture

Citation

Roth, T. and Burns, M. (2018), A Gateway to Easily Integrate Simulation Platforms for Co-Simulation of Cyber-Physical Systems, 2018 Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, Porto, -1, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/MSCPES.2018.8405394 (Accessed October 21, 2025)