Distributing Cyber-Physical Systems Simulation: The Satellite Constellation Case

Abstract

The goal of this position paper is to contribute for the improving of Cyber-Physical System (CPS) simulations by introducing distribution. CPS use computations andcommunication tightly interacting with physical processes. So a CPS simulation needs to tackle with three kinds of simulations: the computational simulation, the physical simulation, and the communication simulation. In this paper, we will focus on the communication simulation, and its interaction with the two others simulations. We will draw a landscape of the existing concepts and technologies for distributing communication simulation, and then propose an architecture for interacting with the whole CPS simulation. We will apply this architecture to a simulation of a satellite constellation, where satellites can be simulated with different levels of precision, from the simple generic mathematical model to the heavy-featured CPS simulation.