Testing the verification and validation capability of a DCP based interface for distributed real-time applications

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems are composed of a variety of elements developed by different vendors that are often geographically distributed. Therefore, its development process presents a double challenge: each element has to be developed individually and, at the same time, a correct interaction with the rest of the elements has to be ensured. In a previous work, we proposed and developed an interface, based on the non-proprietary Distributed Co-simulation Protocol standard, to ease the interaction between these elements. In this paper, we improve it to be applicable in a variety of hardware platforms and we test its applicability for the verification and validation process. To do so, firstly, we prove that our interface is hardware agnostic, demonstrating its easy implementation on different platforms. Secondly, we test its applicability in different X-in-the-Loop simulations. Finally, we also test its behaviour in distributed real-time executions, a necessary requirement for linking elements from different suppliers and helping to preserve their Intellectual Property.