High fidelity virtualization of cyber-physical systems

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) tightly integrate cyber and physical components and transcend discrete and continuous domains. It is greatly desired that the synergy between cyber and physical components of CPS is explored even before the complete system is put together. Virtualization has potential to play a significant role in exploring such synergy. In this paper, we propose a CPS virtualization approach based on the integration of virtual machine and physical component emulator. It enables real software, virtual hardware, and virtual physical components to execute in a holistic virtual execution environment. We have implemented this approach using QEMU as the virtual machine and Matlab/Simulink as the physical component emulator, respectively. To achieve high-fidelity between the real system and its virtualization, we have developed a strategy for synchronizing the virtual machine and the physical component emulator. To evaluate our approach, we have successfully applied it to real-world control systems. Experiments results have shown that our approach achieves high-fidelity in capturing dynamic behaviors of the entire system. This approach is promising in enabling early development of cyber components of CPS and early exploration of the synergy of cyber and physical components.