A Co-Simulation Interface for Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) tightly integrate software and plant components and transcend software and control domains. It is greatly desired that the close interactions between software and plant components of CPS are clearly explored even before the complete system is put together. Lack of strict definition for interaction between the two domains has been considered as an obstacle to the development of high-assurance CPS. We present an approach to formalizing HW/SW interface. We advocate the use of Cyber/Physical interface as a step towards bridging this gap. Such interface models should have formal semantics, be ecient for co-simulation, and cover all Cyber/Physical behaviors described by Cyber/Physical interface. Case studies on a realistic example have shown that the approach has major potential in verifying system level properties of CPS, therefore improving the high-confidence of CPS.