The ACOSAR Project

The Advanced Co-Simulation Open System Architecture (ACOSAR) project was an ITEA3 project that led to the initial specification of the Distributed Co-Simulation Protocol (DCP).

ITEA3 ACOSAR

Facts

Consortium

Achievements

ACOSAR responded to a strong market request in a plenitude of industrial domains: Consistent and seamless system development and validation. For this, ACOSAR uses a modular co-simulation approach, supporting flexible system development by its modular characteristics, to integrate domain-specific subsystems. However, in development stages where real-time systems have to be integrated into simulation environments, huge configuration effort is still necessary. ACOSAR focused on the specification of a non-proprietary, open real-time system interface, the so-called Distributed Co-Simulation Protocol (DCP). It can be used for sharing relevant information to enable efficient and safe operation of real-time systems, e.g. simulation tools, microcontrollers, electronic control units, operating systems, virtual platforms, or test beds. A communication architecture and protocol was defined, which is independent from the actually used communication system. An early version of the DCP was published as a publicly available ITEA3 project deliverable, representing a release candidate for standardization.

Acknowledgments

The ACOSAR project was partially funded by the Austrian Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies (COMET) program, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the support code 01lS15033A.

FFG BMBF

Modelica Association

In the final year of ACOSAR, the consortium members decided to persue standardization of the DCP with the Modelica Association. Since July 2018 the DCP is developed as a Modelica Association Project (MAP).