A Summary on Systems of Systems Engineering1

Thinking in terms of SoS brings a 180 change in viewpoint. In traditional embedded systems design (being a subsystem in itself) we focus on how to effectively design those embedded subsystems to implement the functions of a device.This device plays a role in the physical world. With the introduction of embedded networking we move to cyber-physical systems in which these embedded subsystems now form the nodes in a larger whole, also crossing the borderlines of different systems. From this perspective we regard the larger ICT context as the enabler of the involved embedded subsystems. SoS is about how to design, engineer, maintain and evolve a composition of subsystems while acknowledging the fact that these subsystems remain independent, serving their own functions, with their own management and lifecycles.