A Unified Architecture Framework Supporting SoS's Development

Abstract

The engineering of systems-of-systems (SoSs) is a critical issue that requires the definition of multiple viewpoints that are dedicated to various concerns of stakeholders. To address this challenge, this article contributes to the definition of a reusable framework handling the design of SoSs' architectures by adopting a conceptual model of architecture framework ‘ISO42010.' The proposed framework extends this standard by using well-defined software development processes to identify and implement the different architectural viewpoints. Besides, these processes are used in a way to take advantage of managing a set of diagrams given by a UML profile, and then, to verify that the parts of the architecture form a consistent whole. In this context, the authors define four main viewpoints dedicated to the various stakeholders and which are essential to allow them to implement different SoSs. To guide the coordination of the development tasks, this framework provides again a development processes model that allows the stakeholders to explicitly design the viewpoint they want using an SoS-UML profile.