Heterogeneous Modeling of Cyber-Physical Systems for Efficient Design Exploration

Abstract
The pervasiveness of electronics in our life is making it possible to assemble and implement heterogeneous, safety critical, cyber-physical systems (CPS), tightly integrating software processes that aim to control physical processes to reach the desired system behavior. Efficient and robust realization of these systems places several challenges for designers, due to the complex set of requirements need to be handled, possibly including safety, real-time and reliability constraints. Currently available tools and design flows can hardly handle such a heterogeneous set of specifications, without incurring expensive design iterations.

This talk discusses viable modeling tools that can help tackle the above challenges and achieve high-quality, efficient CPS design solution. As a design driver, we consider the design of an aircraft Electric Power System (EPS), where a bus power control unit (“cyber” component) controls the physical plant (loads, generators and buses) by sensing a set of voltages and currents, and by actuating a set of contactors, to deliver the desired power levels throughout the vehicle. We first provide a brief overview of EPS requirements and show how SysML can be used as an effective language to capture them. To validate and execute such requirements, a library of models is then generated at different levels of abstraction. High-level EPS models, implemented in SysML, are used to design and verify initial architecture. More detailed models are instead implemented using Simulink to refine the system specification into a HW/SW architecture that allows verifying real-time constraints o n the system dynamics.

Bio:
Mohammad Mozumdar has been working as a postdoctoral scholar in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences department of the University of California, Berkeley since February, 2010. He received Ph.D. in electronics and communication engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Dr. Mozumdar’s research interests include methodologies and tools for embedded system especially in the domain of sensor networks; energy efficient building information and control system design; cyber physical system; methodology for the design of distributed embedded systems typically subjected to high real time, safety and reliability constraints.