FMI-Based Distributed Co-Simulation with Enhanced Security and Intellectual Property Safeguards

TL;DR

The paper tackles the problem of securely distributed co-simulation for continuous-time and hybrid systems while protecting intellectual property. It proposes an FMI-based approach built on UniFMU that keeps models on trusted platforms by splitting the FMU binary from the model and using a ZeroMQ Pub/Sub proxy architecture, with client-initiated connections and Protobuf-based data exchange. The authors demonstrate two demos under four network settings and evaluate the trade-off between IP protection and performance using ISO/IEC 25010 guidelines, showing viable operation under certain network conditions. The work enables collaborative engineering across organizations without exposing proprietary code, and discusses future enhancements such as stronger authentication, data confidentiality, and VLAN-based isolation.

Abstract

Distributed co-simulation plays a key role in enabling collaborative modeling and simulation by different stakeholders while protecting their Intellectual Property (IP). Although IP protection is provided implicitly by co-simulation, there is no consensus in the guidelines to conduct distributed co-simulation of continuous-time or hybrid systems with no exposure to potential hacking attacks. We propose an approach for distributed co-simulation on top of UniFMU with enhanced cybersecurity and IP protection mechanisms, ensuring that the connection is initiated by the client and the models and binaries live on trusted platforms. We showcase the functionality of this approach using two co-simulation demos in four different network settings and analyze the trade-off between IP-protected distribution and performance efficiency in these settings.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: Deployment diagram of distributed co-simulation with UniFMU.