A Dual Reality Simulation Environment for Cyber-Physical Systems

Recent advances on networked devices under different communication infrastructures and capabilities are reshaping the real of networked control systems. As a result of the integration of wireless devices in cyber-physical environments, a set of new challenges has arisen. Under this new paradigm, it is imperative to ensure that the underlying communication, computation and control methods are appropriately designed, and subsequently evaluated using very stringent metrics. Thus, in such a context, it becomes crucial the availability of simulation tools that could transparently aggregate components of a given real cyber-physical system with a virtual world entities counterparts, either wireless nodes, routers or even plants. This paper presents a dual reality environment that allows merging real networked applications with user deployed virtual counterparts, and the underlying realistic simulation of the overall dual cyber-physical system. A benchmark three-tank system under remote control over a wireless sensor and actuator network is used to illustrate how the simulator can be effectively used.