A multi-scale modelling perspective for SoS architectures

International audienceSoftware architectures for System of Systems (SoS) is an important research area. The design of an SoS can be organized around a set of architectural transformation models. In this paper, we propose a multi-scale modeling approach for SoS architecture description mastering the description details complexity. The proposed design approach is founded on SysML (System modeling language) notations and uses block diagrams. The diagrams are subject to vertical and horizontal transformations for refinement, since reaching a fine-grain description representing the necessary details. The intermediate models provide a description with a given abstraction that allow the validation to be conducted significantly while remaining tractable w.r.t. complexity. The validation scope can involve intrinsic properties ensuring the model correctness w.r.t. SysML description (eg. interface compatibility). An SoS architecture will provide these intrinsic properties, to have a precise model of the SoS architecture (its constituents and the connections between them). We adopt a rule-oriented description technique. The rules manage the refinement process as a model transformation between the coarse-grain and the fine-grain descriptions. We experimented our approach by a case study modeling an Integrated Air Defense (IAD) SoS using SysML models