Service-Oriented Middleware Architectures for Cyber-Physical

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) roughly refer to the integration of computation (cyber) and physical processes. In CPS, embedded devices/computers and various sensors are interconnected to monitor and control the physical processes. The recent interests research into CPS highlighted some of the design challenges in building CPS and the need for broader research into middleware architectures. In this paper, we first present systematic literature survey of research outputs in CPS middleware designs to (i) present the state-of-the-art and (ii) to bring out some research focus on the issue. Then, we propose our early conceptual middleware design named WebMed. The middleware is designed with a service-oriented view point to support CPS applications. WebMed enables access to the underlying smart devices and integration of its device specific functionality with other software services. It consists of five components: WebMed node, Web service enabler, service repository, engine, and application development. With WebMed, interacting with physical devices becomes as easy as invoking a computation service. Using the basics of service-oriented guidelines, we can build a loosely coupled infrastructure that exposes the functionality of physical devices to the Web for application development.