Systems-of-Systems Design Patterns: A Systematic Literature Review and Synthesis

Design patterns are an established approach for reusing knowledge about good solutions to recurring problems. Patterns can be seen as a way of describing the best practices, and have been used in many different fields, ranging from building architecture and city planning to software development. There are also scattered results relating to patterns for systems-of-systems. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and review the literature on patterns for systems-of-systems and make a synthesis of a recommended approach for the field. Specifically, the novel contributions of the paper are to propose a consolidated structure for describing individual patterns and suggest the dimensions along which a pattern catalog can be organized. The paper also summarizes the concrete patterns suggested in the existing literature and classifies them according to the recommended structure.