System of Systems Modelling: Recent work Review and a Path Forward

Abstract

Systems-of-Systems (SoSs) stand out from monolithic systems, because of their composed nature, their large scale, their decentralized control mechanism, their evolving environments, and their large number of stakeholders. Due to the varied methodologies and domains of applications in existing literature, there does not exist a single unified consensus for processes involved in System-of-Systems Engineering (SoSE). The purpose of this article is to provide a cursory description of the SoS basic concepts on the one hand, and then to analyse the main challenges in its development. Finally, we report the literature review showing various techniques and methods that have been modified from the conventional systems engineering to better fit the needs of SoSs design. We hope the findings of this work may encourage and inform the community researchers of the creation of a more holistic and unified engineering process that is tailored for the demands of these large-scale systems. Thus, the complexity of the SoS development lends itself nicely to a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) which provides communication and verification that transcends the levels of development. MBSE uses a model or set of models to document and communicate from the system requirements level down to the software implementation level.