Towards Multiple-Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation for Testing Heterogeneous Cyber-Physical Systems

Many hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) tools and techniques have focused on testing of standalone embedded systems, or designed for some specific applications, so that engineers should totally modify them when multiple systems for new applications need to be developed. This paper presents an extended HILS framework for testing multiple heterogeneous embedded systems simultaneously. By employing publish-subscribe middleware, the proposed framework can provide scalability and flexibility in terms of system composition. Also, a lightweight software layer loaded on each system enhances usability and reusability of the framework.