Design and simulation of a SOA-based system of systems for automation in the residential sector

Today's process industries typically utilise a very large set of multi-disciplinary, connected, heterogeneous systems composed of a large number of components, from individual sensors to whole control, monitoring and supervisory control systems. The use of such process control systems spans a wide range of application domains from traditional process industries to power distribution and residential applications. Regardless of the application, the design, implementation, optimised operation, maintenance and monitoring of such complex systems is often difficult to effectively achieve. Therefore, there is a need for the migration of such systems to scalable and modular plug and play platforms supported by effective engineering tools. This paper outlines a distributed modular service-based approach to the implementation of a real-time residential automation system application composed of heating, home automation and vehicle parking systems. The main focus of this paper is on the design and simulation of this System of Systems (SoS) focusing on the home parking, heating and vehicle monitoring application components and their interactions. The use of a component-based engineering approach is reported on providing 3D modelling and simulation capabilities prior to the physical implementation of the system, and from which the orchestration logic can be automatically generated. A potential toolkit for SOA-based application design and deployment is suggested.