ArchEx: An extensible framework for the exploration of cyber-physical system architectures

We present ARCHEx, a framework for cyber-physical system architecture exploration. We formulate the exploration problem as a mapping problem, where “virtual” components are mapped into“real”components from pre-defined libraries to minimize an objective function while guaranteeing that system requirements are satisfied. ARCHEx leverages an extensible set of patterns to enable formal, yet flexible, requirement specification, a graph-based internal representation of the system architecture, and algorithms based on mixed integer linear programming to solve the mapping problem. Its effectiveness is demonstrated on two industrial case studies: an aircraft power distribution network and a reconfigurable automated production line.