The Distributed Co-simulation Protocol for the integration of real-time systems and simulation environments

Virtual system development gets more and more important in many industrial domains. It is considered to reduce development times, lower computing costs, and shorten time-to-market. Co-simulation is a particularly promising approach for modular and interoperable development. In practice the integration and coupling of heterogeneous systems still require enormous efforts. The configuration and operation of distributed hardware-in-the-loop systems and simulations contribute to efficiency of testing. Currently no standardized interface or protocol specification is available, which allows the interaction of real-time and non-real-time systems of different vendors. This paper for the first time presents the Distributed Co-simulation Protocol (DCP) which is subject to proposal as a standard for real-time and non-real-time system integration and simulation. The DCP consists of a data model, a finite state machine, and a communication protocol including a set of protocol data units. It is designed as a tool independent standard. It was developed in context of the ACOSAR project and is subject to standardization as a Modelica Association Project (MAP). It enables the definition, configuration and execution of a wide range of different simulations and test scenarios. It supports a master-slave architecture for simulation setup and control. The specification defines the design of a slave only, the design of a master is not in scope of the specification. To highlight the industrial applicability of the DCP, three examples from the automotive domain are shown.