Simulation/Co-Simulation Alternatives for Multi-Domain, Multi- Level, Multi-Language Design of Smart Sensor: The SMAC Methodology

Smart Systems represent a broad class of intelligent, miniaturized systems incorporating functionalities like sensing, actuation and control. Their heterogeneity in terms of domains requires handling different levels of abstraction and different communication and synchronization styles, together with different languages and frameworks. This heavily impacts simulation. Directly simulating in a single environment such a degree of heterogeneity is impossible. On the other hand, cosimulation may lead to integration errors and to a loss in terms of accuracy due to the conjunct adoption of heterogeneous domains. Nonetheless, simulation is crucial in the design and verification loop, as well as to respect budget constraints. This work proposes the SMAC design flow for smart systems. It provides a formalization of the typical abstraction levels and design domains of a smart system. The proposed taxonomy allows identifying a precise role in the design flow for the different simulation and co-simulation scenarios. This will highlight the impact of heterogeneous and homogeneous models of computation on simulation performance. Finally, this works proposes a methodology to move from a co-simulated heterogeneity to a C++ simulatable homogeneous representation of the entire smart system, whose effectiveness is proven on a complex industrial case study.