Classification and Challenges of Cyber-Physical Systems Projects

Advanced technologies like Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are poised to provide valuable opportunities to support smart interactions between the physical world (machines, people and environments) and the cyber worlds.They provide smart capabilities to enhance the physical world.These include improving reliability, quality, safety, health, security, efficiency, operational costs, and maintenance of physical systems or environments.CPS are designed using distributed hardware, software, and network components embedded in physical systems or attached to humans.Many CPS applications are being developed, implemented, and deployed by several organizations for several purposes.However, the development of most of these applications is extremely difficult because this involves different components and has hard requirements.These hard requirements make managing cyber-physical system projects challenging and very difficult.Project managers need to understand the challenges of different CPS to be able to successfully plan, complete, and deliver their projects with less difficulty.As CPS applications can have a wide range of usage and properties, it is necessary to identify common grounds among different types of these applications.Therefore, in this paper we provide a classification for these projects based on the type of network they use.We identify five categories: Nanoscale CPS (NCPS), Body Area CPS (BCPS), Local Area CPS (LCPS), Mobile Ad Hoc CPS (MCPS), and Wide Area CPS (WCPS).This classification offers a better way for project managers to understand the common complexities and possible solution directions for each category.