A Reference Architecture for Smart Car Parking Management Systems

Smart car parking management systems (SPMSs) have gained an ever-increasing popularity for the digital management of car parking processes. While various techniques and technologies have been proposed for SPMSs, the literature lacks in any generic software architecture design that can be reused systematically for the specifications of quality SPMS architectures. To bridge this gap, we propose a reference architecture (RA) for the SPMS product family after performing a comprehensive domain analysis. Our RA design offers a feature model that consists of the common and varying features for SPMSs. We offer multiple viewpoints for our RA, including context, module, component and connector, and allocation. The context viewpoint focuses on the stakeholders, the module viewpoint focuses on the software units, the component and connector viewpoint focuses on the layered architecture of SPMSs, and the allocation viewpoint focuses on mapping software units into the physical components. Each viewpoint can be re-used for specifying the application architecture of any SPMSs. We validated our RA with a real SPMS scenario specification and prototype development, where the former measures the reusability of RA and the latter measures the development performance. The RA design for SPMSs is expected to be useful for several stakeholders who research, develop, and sell SPMS solutions.