Digital Thread in Electronics, IT, and the IoT

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Challenges

Over the last fifty years, commercial electronics has shown a number of sustained trends:

• • Greater product functionality, generally supported by more software content

• • Greater product portability, requiring increased mechanical and thermal engineering attention

• Greater product interconnectivity, with expectations of a spontaneous organization into networks like the Internet-of-Things.

Despite this, commercial electronics has been slow to recognize Systems Engineering as a discipline in the same way as defense or aerospace.

The role of MBSE

MBSE supports key market drivers like time-to-market and Performance/Cost/Quality balance because it addresses these marketing challenges

• • Cyber-physical – As a combination of software, electronic and mechanical components (and sometimes more), modern electronic products (especially IoT) require multidisciplinary approaches, where no single design or analysis tool is sufficient.

• • Agile – IoT products are designed to change rapidly, so the development process must be closely coupled to configuration and project management. Code generation from the system model is a major positive.

• Secure – Network elements like IoT products are vulnerable to outside actors. Building in security, safety and reliability requires recognition of non-obvious extended connections between features and functions.

How Intercax can help

• • Syndeia

• • Solvers

• Services

Intercax has helped train over 4000 new users in MBSE and SysML, with special emphasis on hands-on mastery of modeling and simulation. Organizations new to MBSE can benefit from Intercax’s training, consulting and custom development service in identifying and adopting best practices.

Resources

Intercax has published two tech notes in the area recently, one on a mobile telephone “phablet” accessing a variety of cellular networks and one on a representative IoT product, a locater/pager in an office network. These technotes and associated models, videos and blog posts are listed below.

Tech Notes:

• • Phablet – Application of MBE to Electronics

• • Locater/Pager – Application of MBE to IoT Product and Project Modeling

• Smart Home – Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

SysML Models:

 Phablet model: IBM Rhapsody model | Magicdraw model

Blog Posts:

• MBE For Electronics: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
• Modeling Project and Product For Internet-of-Things: Part 1 | Part 2
• Smart Home Internet of Things (IoT): Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
• MBE for Consumer Products: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
• MBSE For Electronic Voting System Security: INCOSE IS ’18 Presentation
• MBSE For Electronic Voting System Security: MagicDraw Series, Rhapsody Series

Syndeia Demonstration, IBM Continuous Engineering for the IoT Summit, Long Beach, CA (16th Nov, 2016) –