Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Background/Objectives: The design of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) needs an approach that allows us to model effectively their heterogeneous components, having both a computational and a physical nature. To contribute to this area, a new metamodeling approach for designing CPS is proposed in this paper. Methods: The metamodeling approach allows CPS designers the development of the metamodels in the different mathematical semantics (e.g., graph-based, vector-based, geometry-based). This is possible due to the introduction of the additional level of the metamodeling architecture (M4), which expresses the studied domain in terms of sets. To prove that M4 is mathematically sufficient for producing all considered in the paper meta-metamodels (M3s), we give definitions of M3s in terms of M4, i.e. as having algebraic structure subsets. Results: To prove the concept, a geometrical meta-metamodel Ω, linking physical properties of multidimensional domains with their spatial structure, is proposed. Structural analysis of physical models showed the possible alphabet of Ω, which includes corresponding to the dimensions of the space metatypes; this has been a common result of abstraction from a geometrical structure of physical objects. Using the geometrical meta-metamodel Ω allows us to unify the representation of the spatial information at different levels of the CPS design. Conclusion/Application: The software tool that implements the proposed metamodeling approach is currently under development by the authors. The tool enables designers to express the syntax and semantics of metamodels and apply them for modelling CPS.

Keywords: Cyber-Physical System, Domain-Specific Modeling, Geometrical Meta-Metamodel, Metamodeling