The evolution of System of Systems (SoS) architectures is a difficult process due to the complex ... more The evolution of System of Systems (SoS) architectures is a difficult process due to the complex interactions between entities that exist in an SoS. Adequate tools are thus needed in capturing these interdependencies to support informed decisions on architectural evolutions. In this paper, an approach is introduced to facilitate decision making on architecture evolution strategies. The main purpose of evolving architecture is to satisfy advanced capability and performance objectives through adding new systems, replacing existing systems, changing links, etc. The paper employs Colored Petri Nets (CPN), a powerful discrete event dynamic simulation tool, to model, simulate and evaluate the existing and evolving architectures. However, it is unrealistic to improve performance without considering the cost of architecture evolutions. This paper regards complexity as an indicator of the architecture evolving cost. Compared to other complexity metrics, dynamic complexity is included in the complexity metric in this paper. Eventually, an appropriate evolution choice could be achieved by examining the tradeoff space between complexity and performance. This approach is illustrated with a conceptual SoS problem.
The dynamic planning and development of a large collection of systems or a 'System of Systems' (S... more The dynamic planning and development of a large collection of systems or a 'System of Systems' (SoS) pose significant programmatic challenges due to the complex interactions that exist between its constituent systems. Decisions to add, remove, or reconstitute connections between systems can result in repercussive failures across operational and developmental dimensions of an SoS. The work conducted in this research is part of a larger body of work funded by the DoD Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) towards the development of an Analytic Workbench. This paper in particular develops a tool that adopts an operations research-based perspective to SoS level planning based on metrics of cost, performance, schedule and risk. Specifically, our work employs an Approximate Dynamic Programming approach that is well suited to address issues of computational tractability of the resulting dynamic planning optimization problem. This approach allows for identification of near-optimal multi-stage decisions in evolving SoS architectures. A Naval Warfare Scenario SoS example problem illustrates application of the method.
The evolution of System of Systems (SoS) architectures is a difficult process due to the complex ... more The evolution of System of Systems (SoS) architectures is a difficult process due to the complex interactions between entities that exist in an SoS. Adequate tools are thus needed in capturing these interdependencies to support informed decisions on architectural evolutions. In this paper, an approach is introduced to facilitate decision making on architecture evolution strategies. The main purpose of evolving architecture is to satisfy advanced capability and performance objectives through adding new systems, replacing existing systems, changing links, etc. The paper employs Colored Petri Nets (CPN), a powerful discrete event dynamic simulation tool, to model, simulate and evaluate the existing and evolving architectures. However, it is unrealistic to improve performance without considering the cost of architecture evolutions. This paper regards complexity as an indicator of the architecture evolving cost. Compared to other complexity metrics, dynamic complexity is included in the complexity metric in this paper. Eventually, an appropriate evolution choice could be achieved by examining the tradeoff space between complexity and performance. This approach is illustrated with a conceptual SoS problem.
The dynamic planning and development of a large collection of systems or a 'System of Systems' (S... more The dynamic planning and development of a large collection of systems or a 'System of Systems' (SoS) pose significant programmatic challenges due to the complex interactions that exist between its constituent systems. Decisions to add, remove, or reconstitute connections between systems can result in repercussive failures across operational and developmental dimensions of an SoS. The work conducted in this research is part of a larger body of work funded by the DoD Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) towards the development of an Analytic Workbench. This paper in particular develops a tool that adopts an operations research-based perspective to SoS level planning based on metrics of cost, performance, schedule and risk. Specifically, our work employs an Approximate Dynamic Programming approach that is well suited to address issues of computational tractability of the resulting dynamic planning optimization problem. This approach allows for identification of near-optimal multi-stage decisions in evolving SoS architectures. A Naval Warfare Scenario SoS example problem illustrates application of the method.
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Papers by Zhemei Fang