In CPS development and production environments, tightly integrated processes include different engineering disciplines, development and production departments, and software tools working together, where all of the technical engineering processes become strictly intertwined. CPS development and production toolchains have a highly heterogeneous nature, and supporting toolchain architects is necessary for improving the understanding of the interrelationships between tools. To this end, this thesis mainly concentrates on the interoperability of CPS toolchains with an ambition to improve the understanding of interoperability. A literature survey was conducted to analyze the literature on interoperability with an aim to understand how the interoperability is assessed. Findings of the literature review showed that the existing methods mainly use maturity-like assessment models to assess interoperability and they focus on selective aspects of interoperability. These models use distinct levels and do not guide the stakeholders on how to improve the current state of interoperability. This revealed the need for a more flexible approach for assessing interoperability of CPS toolchains. A case study was developed and exercised with an ambition to test the applicability of the visualization approach. In total, three different visualization techniques were evaluated: circular ideogram, node-link diagram, and balloon layout with a clustering algorithm as an extended version of node-link diagram. This thesis concluded by highlighting that data visualizations and visual analytics are not only a method for understanding the interoperability of CPS toolchains, but also a necessity. Data visualization approaches create many opportunities to make interoperability finally visible and the CPS industry should focus its effort on appropriate data collection, usage, and sharing methods in order to best use data visualization and visual analytics technologies. / Cyber-fysiska system (CPS) är ett resultat av mångfacetterade produktutvecklingsprocesser, som innefattar flerdimensionell komplexitet. I CPS:s utvecklings- och produktionsmiljöer, innefattar dessa tätt integrerade processer olika tekniska discipliner, utvecklings- och produktionsavdelningar, och programvaruverktyg som arbetar tillsammans, där alla tekniska ingenjörsprocesser blir strikt sammanflätade. Beslut som fattas av en intressent kan således ha en inverkan på andra intressenter. Verktygskedjor för CPS:s utveckling och produktion har därför en mycket heterogen karaktär, och det är därför nödvändigt med stödjande utvecklare av verktygskedjan för att förbättra förståelsen av sambanden mellan verktyg. För detta ändamål fokuserar denna avhandling främst på interoperabiliteten hos CPS:s verktygskedjor, med ambitionen att förbättra förståelsen för interoperabilitet och, som en följd, vägleda verktygskedjans utvecklare att fatta kostnadseffektiva och hållbara beslut baserade på förbättrad förståelse. En litteraturundersökning genomfördes för att analysera litteratur om interoperabilitet med syfte att förstå hur interoperabilitet bedöms. Resultaten av litteraturgenomgången visade att de befintliga metoderna huvudsakligen använder mognadsliknande bedömningsmodeller för att bedöma interoperabiliteten, och de fokuserar på selektiva aspekter av interoperabiliteten. Dessa modeller använder olika nivåer och vägleder inte intressenterna i hur det aktuella läget för interoperabilitet kan förbättras. Detta visade att det behövs en mer flexibel inställning för att bedöma interoperabiliteten av CPS:s verktygskedjor. Den systematiska litteraturöversikten avslutades genom att tydliggöra att visualisering och visuell analys visar lovande möjligheter för att externalisera den kunskap som nås av bedömningsmodeller med de möjligheter som visualiseringar kan ge. För att studera situationen gällande interoperabilitet i utvecklingen av CPS, utvecklades och genomfördes en fallstudie med ambitionen att testa visualiseringsmetodens tillämplighet. Fallstudien visade en verktygskedjas interoperabilitet, som används för att utveckla ett inbäddat slutet loopkontrollsystem med olika visualiseringstekniker. Totalt har tre olika visualiseringstekniker utvärderas: (a) cirkulärt ideogram, (b) nod- länkdiagram, och (c) ballonglayout med en klusteralgoritm som en utökad version av nodlänkdiagram, vilket gav vissa insikter om vilka tekniker som är mest lämpliga. Varje teknik diskuteras i detalj med ett interoperabilitetsperspektiv. De utmaningar och möjligheter som datavisualisering och visuella analyser ger förklaras dessutom för att synliggöra interoperabilitet. Denna avhandling avslutas med att lyfta fram att datavisualiseringar och visuella analyser inte bara är metoder för att förstå interoperabiliteten av CPS:s verktygskedjor utan också en nödvändighet. Datavisualiseringsmetoder skapar många möjligheter att slutligen göra interoperabilitet synlig och CPS- industrin bör fokusera sina ansträngningar på lämplig datainsamling, användande och delningsmetoder för att på bästa sätt utnyttja datavisualisering och visuella analystekniker. / <p>QC 20170203</p>

This thesis was one of the deliverables of StandIN. The purpose of StandIN was to propose a common framework including standards for technical interoperability. The goal of this thesis was to structure and analyze information about the knowledge- and adoption level of the standards among providers of healthcare information systems (HIS's). Moreover, it aimed to evaluate different aspect that might affect the adoption. The target group was providers of HIS's used in Swedish county councils and regions. The information was gathered through a survey and semi-structured interviews, and stored in an Excel database. From the database, Pivot tables and charts were created in order to show the knowledge- as well as adoption level of the different standards. The results were thereafter compared to theory about interoperability and standard adoption. It was clear that the knowledge level varied for the different standards. In addition, the adoption level was very low - except from CCOW and HL7 v2. Least adopted were domain-specific standards. The results also indicated a trend for only adopting parts of standards. Moreover, many providers stated that they performed specific integrations rather than followed common standards. This seemed to be due to the choice of standards being too wide, and the actual adoption not being consistent among the different providers. According to the providers, an introduction of a national framework based on uniform and consistent international standards was an awaited solution to the problem. A future extension of this thesis would be to perform a similar study involving the customers. The database could also be used to do clustered analyses of the adoption state in different county councils and regions. Moreover, it could be used to analyze the development of standard adoption over time. / Den här uppsatsen var ett utav delresultaten i StandIN, ett initiativ till att ta fram ett gemensamt ramverk med standarder för teknisk interoperabilitet. Den här uppsatsen syftade till att strukturera och analysera information om kunskaps- och tillämpningsnivån för de tilltänkta standarderna. Målgruppen var leverantörer av vårdinformationssystem som används i Sveriges landsting och regioner. Informationen samlades in genom en enkät samt semi-strukturerade intervjuer, och lagrades sedan i en Excel-databas. Pivot-tabeller och -diagram skapades för att visualisera kunskaps- och tillämpningsnivån, och resultaten jämfördes sedan med teori om interoperabilitet och standardtillämpning. Det var tydligt att kunskapsnivån skilde sig för de olika standarderna. Tillämpningsnivån var generellt sett väldigt låg, bortsett från CCOW och HL7 v2. Minst tillämpade var domänspecifika standarder. Det var också tydligt att centrala leverantörer inte tillämpade samma standarder, vilket troligtvis påverkar de kompletterande systemen. Många leverantörer gjorde snarare specifika integrationer, än följde gemensamma standarder. Anledningen var att valet av standarder var för brett, och att den faktiska tillämpningen av standarder inte var konsekvent mellan olika leverantörer. Enligt leverantörerna skulle ett nationellt ramverk med enhetliga och internationella standarder vara en efterlängtad lösning på problemet. En fortsättning på denna uppsats är att använda databasen till att göra klusteranalyser för tillämpningsnivån av standarder hos system i olika landsting och regioner. Databasen skulle också kunna användas till att analysera utvecklingen av kunskap och tillämpning över tid. / StandIN

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Sponsored by the Central Test and Evaluation Investment Program (CTEIP) under the Director of Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), the Foundation Initiative 2010 (FI 2010) project is chartered to enable interoperability among ranges, facilities, and simulations in a timely and cost-efficient manner and to foster reuse of range assets and future software systems. To achieve this vision, FI 2010 has developed and is validating a common architecture called the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA), which provides for real-time software system interoperability using the TENA Middleware, as well as interfaces to existing range assets, C4ISR systems, and simulations. The TENA middleware is being developed using an iterative development process, with functionality being released in four “spirals.” The current software version, Release 3.0, was built upon previous releases and provides some key functionality enhancements to include multicast transport, vector data types and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) multicast communication support. This paper will provide detailed information on the current status of the FI 2010 project, the TENA Middleware Release 3.0, and how the TENA software has been utilized to support test and training events (e.g., Millennium Challenge 02).

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / While military asset testing and training might be seen as complementary in supporting military prepareness, they cannot complement each other without an effective and efficient method of distributing data laterally across geographically separated data gathering, analysis, and display systems. This cost-effective integration of range data and telemetry resources is critical to ensuring the war worthiness of today’s advanced weapon systems such as the Joint Strike Fighter and the sensor and weapon platforms such as the highly sophisticated unmanned vehicles that are beginning to populate the air, land, and sea areas of operations. To ensure the advantages of range interoperability are available across the DoD Test and Training ranges, a Central Test and Evaluation Program (CTEIP) project has developed and is refining the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA). The core of TENA is the TENA Common Infrastructure, including the TENA Middleware and TENA Repository. The TENA Middleware is the high-performance, real-time, low-latency communication infrastructure used by range instrumentation software and tools during execution of a range event. The TENA Object Model enables semantic interoperability among range resource applications by encoding the information to be communicated among those range applications. It may be seen as a range community-wide set of interface and protocol definitions encapsulated in an object-oriented design. The TENA tools, utilities, and gateways assist the user in creating and managing an integration of range resources, as well as in optimizing the TENA Common Infrastructure. TENA has proven to be a critical enabler of distributed live exercises to include the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Millennium Challenge 2002, two major Joint National Training Capability exercises in 2004, Cope Thunder 04-02, and Joint Roving Sands/Red Flag 2005. TENA, as integral part of range data systems, has become an important component in the realization of range interoperability.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Joint Mission Environment Test Capability (JMETC) is a distributed live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) testing capability developed to support the acquisition community and to demonstrate Net-Ready Key Performance Parameters (KPP) requirements in a customer-specific Joint Mission Environment (JME). JMETC provides connectivity to the Services’ distributed test capabilities and simulations, as well as industry test resources. JMETC uses the Test and Training Enabling Architecture, TENA, which is well-designed for supporting JMETC events. TENA provides the architecture and software capabilities necessary to enable interoperability among range instrumentation systems, facilities, and simulations. TENA, used in major field exercises and numerous distributed test events, provides JMETC with a technology already being deployed in DoD.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / iNET is a project tasked to foster advances in networking and telemetry technology to meet emerging needs. This paper describes one objective of the project, which is standardization and interoperability. It begins to explore issues for achieving a level of interoperability among differing vendor’s hardware such as data acquisition units, data recorders, video systems, transceivers, and network encryption. Specifically, this paper addresses the expansion of the current demonstration system with the addition of multiple vendor data acquisition units. It will also attempt to address the level of standardization necessary for achieving interoperability while still enabling vendors to add their value added contributions into their products.

The IEC Common Information Model (CIM) is of central importance in enabling smart grid interoperability. Its continual development aims to meet the needs of the smart grid for semantic understanding and knowledge representation for a widening domain of resources and processes. With smart grid evolution the importance of information and data management has become an increasingly pressing issue not only because far more data is being generated using modern sensing, control and measuring devices but also because information is now becoming recognised as the ‘integral component’ that facilitates the optimal flexibility required of the smart grid. This thesis looks at the impacts of CIM implementation upon the landscape of smart grid issues and presents research from within National Grid contributing to three key areas in support of further CIM deployment. Taking the issue of Enterprise Information Management first, an information management framework is presented for CIM deployment at National Grid. Following this the development and demonstration of a novel secure cloud computing platform to handle such information is described. Power system application (PSA) models of the grid are partial knowledge representations of a shared reality. To develop the completeness of our understanding of this reality it is necessary to combine these representations. The second research contribution reports on a novel methodology for a CIM-based model repository to align PSA representations and provide a knowledge resource for building utility business intelligence of the grid. The third contribution addresses the need for greater integration of information relating to energy storage, an essential aspect of smart energy management. It presents the strategic rationale for integrated energy modeling and a novel extension to the existing CIM standards for modeling grid-scale energy storage. Significantly, this work has already contributed to a larger body of work on modeling Distributed Energy Resources currently under development at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the USA.

With the passing of the MAP-21 (Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century) Act in 2012, the United States bridge industry has had a significant push for the use of innovative technologies to advance the highway transportation system. Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM) is emerging as an important trend in the industry, in which various technologies and software are being used in all phases of the bridge lifecycle and have been shown to have a variety of benefits. However, most software are stand alone applications and do not efficiently exchange data among other software. This lack of interoperability creates impediments for the efficient and seamless transfer of information across the bridge lifecycle. In recent years, the building industry developed standards to promote interoperability for Building Information Models (BIM). Unfortunately, these standards lack the ability to incorporate bridges. Therefore, there major need for a standard for Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM). Moreover, as technology and modeling software have been coming more prevalent in other domains (roads, geotechnical, environment systems, etc.) there is an even larger need to expand interoperability standards across multi-disciplinary domains. The purpose of this research is to develop a methodology that would enable the interoperability of multi-disciplinary information models. The scope of the methodology is for Bridge Information Models, but the approach is extendable to other domains. This research is motivated by the fundamental issues of interoperability, such as semantic, logic, and software issues. In this research, the fundamental issues of interoperability are investigated as well as an in-depth review of literature proposing solutions. Additionally, current standards for interoperability of information models are reviewed. Based on the findings of the literature review, this research develops, evaluates, and validates a novel methodology for interoperability of information models. The fundamental issues of interoperability are addressed by the use of a taxonomy and ontology. A new standardization process to capture domain knowledge, called in “Information Exchange Standard” is outlined along with a novel method of developing an ontology based on industry workflows. This methodology has been used and validated by an industry domain case study. A software tool to automate the capturing of domain knowledge and development of a taxonomy is presented.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / The interoperability of Feher-patented Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (FQPSK) systems with future and legacy data links is discussed in this paper. In particular, the benefits of “forward” interoperability with 3G (3rd Generation) wireless systems such as WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) up to 40 Mchips/sec are highlighted. Other proposals of forward interoperability with future data links include an enhanced, ultra-bandwidth efficient FQPSK and 16-state FQAM (Feher’s Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) architectures. In addition, since FQPSK based systems have been proven in “dual use” systems and extensively tested and evaluated by the Department of Defense (DoD) and NASA, the analysis of “backward” interoperability with legacy data links such as GSM is also included in this paper.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper provides an overview of software radio and its current state in the industry. Software radio is a technology in which all of the waveform processing, including the physical layer, of a wireless device moves into software. If designed properly, this approach leads to dramatically improved device flexibility, software portability, and reduced development costs. Of course, such a technology brings with it numerous challenges, from hardware components to power constraints to the regulatory environment.