A Maude based Specification for SoS Architecture

Systems of Systems (SoS) are an emergent class of complex systems where the process of architecting and/or developing these systems differs in important ways from other types of complex systems. Usually, SoS are built from components that are large-scale systems in their own right. SoS concerns, such as dispersion, dynamic evolution and emergent behaviour are closely related to communications nature that may exist between sub components. This paper explores an architectural modeling method where communications and relationships in SoS are explicitly and well defined. An Architectural Description Language (called ArchSoS) dedicated to the specification of SoS is proposed. Then a formal semantics based on rewriting logic, through its high-level implementation language Maude, is associated to all SoS architectural elements. This semantic ensures the connectivity (over time) of SoS sub-systems, and the emergence of new SoS services. An illustration of our approach on a Maritime Transport case study is described.