Modular Semantically Integrated System Modelling
Swaminathan Natarajan
Tata Consultancy Services Research
54B Hadapsar I.E. Pune-411013 India
+91 94030 94264
swami.n@tcs.com
Subhrojyoti Roy Chaudhuri
Tata Consultancy Services Research
54B Hadapsar I.E. Pune-411013 India
+91 20 66086411
subhrojyoti.c@tcs.com
Anand Kumar
Tata Consultancy Services Research
54B Hadapsar I.E. Pune-411013 India
+91 20 66086450
anand.ar@tcs.com
Copyright © 2019 by Swaminathan Natarajan, Subhrojyoti Roy Chaudhuri and Anand Kumar. Permission granted to INCOSE to publish and use.
Abstract. In current practice, we engineer systems using modular, composable components.
However, when we model systems in languages such as SysML, we build a single model of the entire
deliverable system (such as a radio telescope). Though the model is of course hierarchical, consisting
of multiple levels of description, these are not quite independent models that can be composed
modularly. For example, if we acquire a power supply off-the-shelf, ideally we would like the sup-
plier to provide us a model of the power supply that can be integrated into our overall system model,
reflecting the same concerns involved in integrating the power supply into our solutions. If we have
distributed teams, can they create separate models that are composable? Can model integration be the
early version of system integration?
This paper discusses how modelling can support modular composability using roles: placeholders for
other entities that the entity being modelled depends on in order to deliver its targeted behaviour. All
the necessary assumptions relating to the role are captured as role profiles. Model composition then
involves binding these context roles to models of actual concrete entities that fit the assumptions.
Our paper presents an illustrative example of compositional modelling of a radio telescope, and
discusses some of the issues involved in binding. It goes further to indicate how these system models
can be linked to relevant domain knowledge frames, and also linked to observations of the system
behaviour. The result is a SystemMap: modular, composable knowledge-centric models that enable
capture of all the information and knowledge relating to a system, linked by a network of semantic
relationships that enable internal consistency checking, as well as model and knowledge refinement
based on consistency with observed real-world behaviours.
Current Practice and Motivation
Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is practised widely, nevertheless there are gaps in current
MBSE capabilities. These gaps become evident if we take a brief look at MBSE usage in a typical
state-of-the-art systems engineering project.
Recently we had the opportunity to participate in the design of the control system for the Square
Kilometer Array (SKA), an international radio telescope project to design two radio telescopes, to be
located in Australia and South Africa, involving over 500 engineers and scientists organized into
multiple consortia that addressed various subsystems, including dish antennas, signal processing,
production of science data products, networking, timing and synchronization, control and physical
infrastructure. The project used SysML for functional analysis and to model the overall system de-