Analytic Dependency Loops in Architectural Models of Cyber-Physical Systems

Rigorous engineering of safety-critical CyberPhysical Systems (CPS) requires integration of heterogeneous modeling methods from different disciplines. It is often necessary to view this integration from the perspective of analyses – algorithms that read and change models. Although such analytic integration supports formal contract-based verification of model evolution, it suffers from the limitation of analytic dependency loops. Dependency loops between analyses cannot be resolved based on existing contract-based verification. This paper makes a step towards using rich architectural descriptions to resolve circular analytic dependencies. We characterize the dependency loop problem and discuss three algorithmic approaches to resolving such loops: analysis iteration, constraint solving, and genetic search. These approaches take advantage of information in multiview architectures to resolve analytic dependency loops. Keywords—Analytical models, Component architectures, Embedded software, Systems engineering and theory