Interfacing physical and cyber worlds: A big data perspective

Abstract

With the increase in utilization and pervasiveness of smart gadgets, there is a rise in new application domains. For that reason, computational technologies are progressing very rapidly, and computations are becoming an essential part of our life. Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are a new evolution in computing that are integrated with the real world along with the physical devices to provide control in real-time environments. CPS generally takes input through sensors and controls the physical system through cyber systems using actuators. Such systems are really complex and challenging as they control real environments. This necessitates a proper interfacing of physical and cyber domains. To this end, the data generated by physical devices is getting bigger and bigger that is collectively acknowledged as big data. The real challenge in interfacing cyber and physical domains is the efficient management of big data. Accordingly, this chapter discusses big data sources and the relevant computing paradigms. It also classifies and discusses the main phases of data management for interfacing CPS, viz., data acquisition, data preprocessing, storage, query processing, data analysis, and actuation.