Design approach for component-based automation systems using exact cover

Networked systems consisting of many different components are gaining more and more importance in human´s living environment (e.g. communication, entertainment, building automation). The design process for such systems is also harder because of the growing complexity and the inhomogeneity of sub-systems realizing different functions. This results in a multi-criteria high-complex combinatorial device selection problem. In this paper a general domain-independent model for Component-based Automation Systems is introduced. To help solving the mentioned selection problem, it is transformed into an Exact Cover Problem. Thus, it is possible to use efficient algorithms like Knuth´s Dancing Links for solving the selection problem.