Energy-Aware System-Level Design of Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are heterogeneous systems in which one or several computational cores interact with the physical environment. This interaction is typically performed through electromechanical elements such as sensors and actuators. Many CPSs operate as part of a network and some of them present a constrained energy budget (for example, they are battery powered). Examples of energy constrained CPSs could be a mobile robot, the nodes that compose a Body Area Network or a pacemaker. The heterogeneity present in the composition of CPSs together with the constrained energy availability makes these systems challenging to design. A way to tackle both complexity and costs is the application of abstract modelling and simulation. This thesis proposed the application of modelling at the system level, taking energy consumption in the different kinds of subsystems into consideration. By adopting this cross disciplinary approach to energy consumption it is possible to decrease it effectively. The results of this thesis are a number of modelling guidelines and tool improvements to support this kind of holistic analysis, covering energy consumption in electromechanical, computation and communication subsystems. From a methodological point of view these have been framed within a V-lifecycle. Finally, this approach has been demonstrated on two case studies from the medical domain enabling the exploration of alternative systems architectures and producing energy consumption estimates to conduct trade-off analysis

Future Perspectives of Co-Simulation in the Smart Grid Domain

The recent attention towards research and development in cyber-physical energy systems has introduced the necessity of emerging multi-domain co-simulation tools. Different educational, research and industrial efforts have been set to tackle the co-simulation topic from several perspectives. The majority of previous works has addressed the standardization of models and interfaces for data exchange, automation of simulation, as well as improving performance and accuracy of co-simulation setups. Furthermore, the domains of interest so far have involved communication, control, markets and the environment in addition to physical energy systems. However, the current characteristics and state of co-simulation testbeds need to be re-evaluated for future research demands. These demands vary from new domains of interest, such as human and social behavior models, to new applications of co-simulation, such as holistic prognosis and system planning. This paper aims to formulate these research demands that can then be used as a road map and guideline for future development of co-simulation in cyber-physical energy systems

System-Level Energy-Aware Design of Cyber-Physical Systems

In this technical report we present the work conducted during the first part of the PhD thesis “System-Level Energy-Aware Design of Cyber-Physical Systems”. We present the application of modelling techniques and methodologies to study energy consumption during the design and implementation of cyber-physical systems. This study is made from the electro-mechanical and computation angle. Additionally we present a setup that allows the combination of abstract models with hardware and software preliminary realizations. This allows a stepwise model to implementation transformation and improved model accuracy. Some of these techniques have been applied to the case study e-Stocking and others have been studied with more simple experimental setups.In addition to the scientific content, we also present a description of the envisioned future work and the plans that will lead to completion of this PhD thesis by April 2015

Validating Intelligent Power and Energy Systems { A Discussion of Educational Needs

Traditional power systems education and training is flanked by the demand for coping with the rising complexity of energy systems, like the integration of renewable and distributed generation, communication, control and information technology. A broad understanding of these topics by the current/future researchers and engineers is becoming more and more necessary. This paper identifies educational and training needs addressing the higher complexity of intelligent energy systems. Education needs and requirements are discussed, such as the development of systems-oriented skills and cross-disciplinary learning. Education and training possibilities and necessary tools are described focusing on classroom but also on laboratory-based learning methods. In this context, experiences of using notebooks, co-simulation approaches, hardware-in-the-loop methods and remote labs experiments are discussed.Comment: 8th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems (HoloMAS 2017

HIL: designing an exokernel for the data center

We propose a new Exokernel-like layer to allow mutually untrusting physically deployed services to efficiently share the resources of a data center. We believe that such a layer offers not only efficiency gains, but may also enable new economic models, new applications, and new security-sensitive uses. A prototype (currently in active use) demonstrates that the proposed layer is viable, and can support a variety of existing provisioning tools and use cases.Partial support for this work was provided by the MassTech Collaborative Research Matching Grant Program, National Science Foundation awards 1347525 and 1149232 as well as the several commercial partners of the Massachusetts Open Cloud who may be found at http://www.massopencloud.or