
Reference Architecture for using Collaborative Com-
puting Paradigms to overcome the challenges and is-
sues with a focus on dynamic IoT environments. Sec-
tion 6 describes and discusses how the applications
and use-cases can be realised from the CCP-IOT-RA.
Section 7 provides a conclusion and Section 8 pro-
vides the details of the future work.
In FIGURE 1, a progression of the content and the
development of the reference architecture is shown.
Reference
Architectures
Reference
Architectures
Evaluation
CCP IOT
Architectures
IOT Environment
Challenges
CCP-IOT-RA
Define CCP-IOT-RA
Application of CCP-
IOT-RA
Figure 1: Progression of systems software architecture and
IOT architectures to define a CCP-IOT-RA.
2 SYSTEMS SOFTWARE
REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE
As systems become increasingly complex, reliant on
software, and software intensive; a need for RA
arises, which provides a blueprint to design and de-
velop the applications. A RA is known to accelerate
the design and development. Additionally, it ensures
that the systems developed, and deployed demon-
strate shared attributes, and qualities such as security,
interoperability, scalability and adaptability.
Developing an architectural design is a non-trivial
task, and takes deep knowledge and large experience,
both in software and in the target application domain
(Palma et al., 2022). Adopting a relevant RA to build
an architectural design of software system can accel-
erate the development process and increase the prob-
ability of success of the software intensive systems.
Over past decades, software architectures and sys-
tems software architectures, in various forms, directly
for applications or as a RA have been proposed, de-
signed, developed and deployed in academia, and in-
dustry. A RA for building IOT systems have been
discussed in (Kaiser et al., 2023). Generic charac-
teristics, and requirements of RA for IOT have been
discussed in (Weyrich and Ebert, 2016).
Systems software requires tailoring, and this is
even more prominent when addressing the specific,
and unique demands of the IOT systems. Given its
dynamic nature, IOT systems necessitates a distinct,
and significant emphasis on developing system soft-
ware architecture and reference architectures.
3 IoT REFERENCE
ARCHITECTURE EVALUATION
CRITERIA
Dynamic IOT environments are characterised by
unique issues, and challenges which have been sum-
marised in (Joshi and Deshpande., 2024). To over-
come these, an architecture based on collaborating
computing paradigms has been developed, and vali-
dated using two applications (a) Data Center Cooling
System (b) Vehicle & Driver behaviour.
A set with three dimensions (a) Context (b) De-
sign (c) Goals, as part of the framework for software
RA, have been described in (Angelov et al., 2009).
• Contexts: IOT systems are complex due to it’s
multidisciplinary nature. When evaluating the
RA, the context is determined by its use by all
technical personnel responsible for designing, de-
veloping, deploying, and maintaining the system.
• Designs: Target design (detailed - High and Low
level and formally described) to satisfy the re-
quirements of the system, and systems software.
• Goals: While a RA is generic, when adopted to
build a system, will have specific goals. Goals
may be technical, engineering, performance and
business. Scope of the goals, as considered for
this evaluation, is limited to the technical, engi-
neering and performance of the systems software.
Business goals are specifically not considered.
In this paper these three dimensions are added to
the scope, and enhanced for use, in evaluation of the
RA for a systems software architecture, and it’s ap-
plication for IOT systems. Thus, a criteria to evaluate
the RA is arrived at. It is used for the evaluation of
the RA and is summarised in TABLE 1.
Further, this paper proposes a set of quality at-
tributes for the RA. They have been summarised in
TABLE 2.
Thus, evaluation proposed and developed in this
section is used, in conjunction with the requirements
of IOT systems, for designing architectures for spe-
cific application and application domains. They are
discussed in further sections.
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