On the scalability of a cyber physical system

Sensors and actuators are the fundamental constituents of a cyber physical system (CPS). Pervasiveness of the sensors, requirement of collaborative processing of data, historical importance of data, and the ever increasing different forms of user applications are not only making data management more complex, but are also bringing more challenges for the scalability of a CPS. On the other hand, the requirement of bringing actuators to complete the feedback loop of a CPS is making it even more complex. There are three stages of complexities associated with scalability: in the physical infrastructure of the data acquisition system, in the communication mechanism, and in the server and user applications. In all these stages, diversity, interoperability and individual capacity limitations of components play an important role in establishing the overall scalability limits of the CPS. In this paper we will systematically study how these parameters affect the scalability limits. Furthermore, we will also study the existing technologies (e.g. of big data and cloud) which can be used for addressing the challenges of scalability imposed at different stages of futuristic cyber physical systems.