MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURE FOR CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Systems connect the physical and digital worlds. They are composed of hardware connected to the physical world, software, and potentially other types of systems. They are utilized across various industries, including robotics, healthcare, smart cities, automotive, industry, and space. These systems are very complex to design and implement. Cloud computing technologies provide an excellent environment for the Cyber-Physical Systems software and tools for maintaining and scaling the infrastructure. One of the main challenges is how to design cloud systems properly for Cyber-Physical Systems. Currently, microservice architecture is broadly used for software in the cloud. At its core, Microservices provide flexibility, availability, scalability, and independence of modules, as well as agile development and deployment processes. These advantages are well-aligned with the needs of Cyber-Physical Systems. However, many challenges still exist in implementing a microservice architecture for Cyber-Physical Systems. The challenges include complex distributed system networking, real-time data processing, microservice software architecture, microservice availability, and reliability of the system components. This paper provides a study whose primary goal is to give the main microservice architectural principles and patterns used, summarize the advantages and challenges, and improve the knowledge of the microservice architecture used for Cyber-Physical Systems. At first, a literature review of modern research papers was conducted. Then, each paper was analyzed. A summary of all selected research papers was produced. The results and conclusion sections deliver the summaries and give future research directions.