Ada(R) Test and Verification System (ATVS)

The Ada Test and Verification System (ATVS) functional description and high level design are completed and summarized. The ATVS will provide a comprehensive set of test and verification capabilities specifically addressing the features of the Ada language, support for embedded system development, distributed environments, and advanced user interface capabilities. Its design emphasis was on effective software development environment integration and flexibility to ensure its long-term use in the Ada software development community

Software Evolution Approach for the Development of Command and Control Systems

2000 Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (CCRTS), June 11-13, 2000, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CAThis paper addresses the problem of how to produce reliable software that is also flexible and cost effective for the DoD distributed software domain. DoD software systems fall into two categories: information systems and war fighter systems. Both types of systems can be distributed, heterogeneous and network-based, consisting of a set of components running on different platforms and working together via multiple communication links and protocols. We propose to tackle the problem using prototyping and a “wrapper and glue” technology for interoperability and integration. This paper describes a distributed development environment, CAPS (Computer- Aided Prototyping System), to support rapid prototyping and automatic generation of wrapper and glue software based on designer specifications. The CAPS system uses a fifth-generation prototyping language to model the communication structure, timing constraints, I/O control, and data buffering that comprise the requirements for an embedded software system. The language supports the specification of hard real-time systems with reusable components from domain specific component libraries. CAPS has been used successfully as a research tool in prototyping large war-fighter control systems (e.g. the command-and-control station, cruise missile flight control system, missile defense systems) and demonstrated its capability to support the development of large complex embedded software.This research was supported in part by the U. S. Army Research Office under contract/grant number 35037-MA and 40473-MA

A model-driven concept for the automatic integration of legacy protocols to distributed component-oriented software systems

The implementation of communication protocols is an important development task that appears frequently in software projects. This article is a vision paper that describes the components of the currently available implementation strategies and problems that arise. The article introduces the main existing protocol engineering techniques and puts them into the context of model driven software development. At the end a methodology is introduced for the automatic generation of manager interfaces of Device Agent protocols for the use in a distributed component oriented environment, using ASN.1 and SDL. This article describes the preliminary results of the MOSES project (model-driven software engineering of distributed embedded systems) which is funded by the German ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In this project the authors are concentrating on medical and facility management areas where they have particular experiences.Die Implementierung von Kommunikationsprotokollen zu externen Systemen ist eine wichtige Aufgabe, welche häufig in Softwareprojekten zu realisieren ist. Dieser Artikel ist ein Ideenpapier, welches die Komponenten bisheriger Implementierungsstrategien und deren Probleme beschreibt. Der Artikel führt die wesentlichen Techniken zur Protokollimplementierung ein und stellt diese im Kontext der modelgetriebenen Softwareentwicklung dar. Zum Schluss wird eine Methode mit ASN.1 und SDL vorgestellt, welche die automatische Generierung von Manager-Schnittstellen für die Protokolle von Geräte- Agenten ermöglicht und dabei den Einsatz in verteilten komponentenbasierten Systemen erlaubt. Der Artikel beschreibt die Zwischenergebnisse des vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten MOSES-Projektes (Modellgetriebene Software- Entwicklung von vernetzten Embedded Systems). In dem Projekt konzentrieren sich die Autoren auf die Bereiche Medizin- und Gebäudetelematik, worin sie besondere Erfahrungen besitzen

REVEAL: Software Documentation and Platform Migration

The Research Environment for Vehicle Embedded Analysis on Linux (REVEAL) is reconfigurable data acquisition software designed for network-distributed test and measurement applications. In development since 2001, it has been successfully demonstrated in support of a number of actual missions within NASA s Suborbital Science Program. Improvements to software configuration control were needed to properly support both an ongoing transition to operational status and continued evolution of REVEAL capabilities. For this reason the project described in this report targets REVEAL software source documentation and deployment of the software on a small set of hardware platforms different from what is currently used in the baseline system implementation. This report specifically describes the actions taken over a ten week period by two undergraduate student interns and serves as a final report for that internship. The topics discussed include: the documentation of REVEAL source code; the migration of REVEAL to other platforms; and an end-to-end field test that successfully validates the efforts

Distributed control applications using local area networks: a LAN based power control system at Rhodes University

This thesis describes the design and development of both the hardware and software of an embedded, distributed control system using a LAN infrastructure for communication between nodes. The primary application of this system is for power monitoring and control at Rhodes University. Both the hardware and software have been developed to provide a modular and scalable system capable of growing and adapting to meet the changing demands placed on it. The software includes a custom written Internet Protocol stack for use in the embedded environment, with a small code footprint and low processing overheads. There is also Linux-based control software, which includes a web-based device management interface and graphical output. Problems specific to the application are discussed as well as their solutions, with particular attention to the constraints of an embedded system

Distributed Engine Control Empirical/Analytical Verification Tools

NASA's vision for an intelligent engine will be realized with the development of a truly distributed control system featuring highly reliable, modular, and dependable components capable of both surviving the harsh engine operating environment and decentralized functionality. A set of control system verification tools was developed and applied to a C-MAPSS40K engine model, and metrics were established to assess the stability and performance of these control systems on the same platform. A software tool was developed that allows designers to assemble easily a distributed control system in software and immediately assess the overall impacts of the system on the target (simulated) platform, allowing control system designers to converge rapidly on acceptable architectures with consideration to all required hardware elements. The software developed in this program will be installed on a distributed hardware-in-the-loop (DHIL) simulation tool to assist NASA and the Distributed Engine Control Working Group (DECWG) in integrating DCS (distributed engine control systems) components onto existing and next-generation engines.The distributed engine control simulator blockset for MATLAB/Simulink and hardware simulator provides the capability to simulate virtual subcomponents, as well as swap actual subcomponents for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) analysis. Subcomponents can be the communication network, smart sensor or actuator nodes, or a centralized control system. The distributed engine control blockset for MATLAB/Simulink is a software development tool. The software includes an engine simulation, a communication network simulation, control algorithms, and analysis algorithms set up in a modular environment for rapid simulation of different network architectures; the hardware consists of an embedded device running parts of the CMAPSS engine simulator and controlled through Simulink. The distributed engine control simulation, evaluation, and analysis technology provides unique capabilities to study the effects of a given change to the control system in the context of the distributed paradigm. The simulation tool can support treatment of all components within the control system, both virtual and real; these include communication data network, smart sensor and actuator nodes, centralized control system (FADEC full authority digital engine control), and the aircraft engine itself. The DECsim tool can allow simulation-based prototyping of control laws, control architectures, and decentralization strategies before hardware is integrated into the system. With the configuration specified, the simulator allows a variety of key factors to be systematically assessed. Such factors include control system performance, reliability, weight, and bandwidth utilization

Support for collaborative component-based software engineering

Collaborative system composition during design has been poorly supported by traditional CASE tools (which have usually concentrated on supporting individual projects) and almost exclusively focused on static composition. Little support for maintaining large distributed collections of heterogeneous software components across a number of projects has been developed. The CoDEEDS project addresses the collaborative determination, elaboration, and evolution of design spaces that describe both static and dynamic compositions of software components from sources such as component libraries, software service directories, and reuse repositories. The GENESIS project has focussed, in the development of OSCAR, on the creation and maintenance of large software artefact repositories. The most recent extensions are explicitly addressing the provision of cross-project global views of large software collections and historical views of individual artefacts within a collection. The long-term benefits of such support can only be realised if OSCAR and CoDEEDS are widely adopted and steps to facilitate this are described. This book continues to provide a forum, which a recent book, Software Evolution with UML and XML, started, where expert insights are presented on the subject. In that book, initial efforts were made to link together three current phenomena: software evolution, UML, and XML. In this book, focus will be on the practical side of linking them, that is, how UML and XML and their related methods/tools can assist software evolution in practice. Considering that nowadays software starts evolving before it is delivered, an apparent feature for software evolution is that it happens over all stages and over all aspects. Therefore, all possible techniques should be explored. This book explores techniques based on UML/XML and a combination of them with other techniques (i.e., over all techniques from theory to tools). Software evolution happens at all stages. Chapters in this book describe that software evolution issues present at stages of software architecturing, modeling/specifying, assessing, coding, validating, design recovering, program understanding, and reusing. Software evolution happens in all aspects. Chapters in this book illustrate that software evolution issues are involved in Web application, embedded system, software repository, component-based development, object model, development environment, software metrics, UML use case diagram, system model, Legacy system, safety critical system, user interface, software reuse, evolution management, and variability modeling. Software evolution needs to be facilitated with all possible techniques. Chapters in this book demonstrate techniques, such as formal methods, program transformation, empirical study, tool development, standardisation, visualisation, to control system changes to meet organisational and business objectives in a cost-effective way. On the journey of the grand challenge posed by software evolution, the journey that we have to make, the contributory authors of this book have already made further advances

Coordination and Computation in distributed intelligent MEMS

International audienceOver the last decades, research on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) has focused on the engineering process which has led to major advances. Future challenges will consist in adding embedded intelligence to MEMS systems to obtain distributed intelligent MEMS. One intrinsic characteristic of MEMS is their ability to be mass-produced. This, however, poses scalability problems because a significant number of MEMS can be placed in a small volume. Managing this scalability requires paradigm-shifts both in hardware and software parts. Furthermore, the need for actuated synchronization, programming, communication and mobility management raises new challenges in both control and programming. Finally, MEMS are prone to faulty behaviors as they are mechanical systems and they are issued from a batch fabrication process. A new programming paradigm which can meet these challenges is therefore needed. In this article, we present CO2Dim, which stands for Coordination and Computation in Distributed Intelligent MEMS. CO2DIM is a new programming environment which includes a language based on a joint development of programming and control capabilities, a simulator and real hardware

A flight software development and simulation framework for advanced space systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-302).Distributed terrestrial computer systems employ middleware software to provide communications abstractions and reduce software interface complexity. Embedded applications are adopting the same approaches, but must make provisions to ensure that hard real-time temporal performance can be maintained. This thesis presents the development and validation of a middleware system tailored to spacecraft flight software development. Our middleware runs on the Generalized Flight Operations Processing Simulator (GFLOPS) and is called the GFLOPS Rapid Real-time Development Environment (GRRDE). GRRDE provides publish-subscribe communication services between software components. These services help to reduce the complexity of managing software interfaces. The hard real-time performance of these services has been verified with General Timed Automata modelling and extensive run-time testing. Several example applications illustrate the use of GRRDE to support advanced flight software development. Two technology-focused studies examine automatic code generation and autonomous fault protection within the GRRDE framework. A complex simulation of the TechSat 21 distributed spacebased radar mission highlights the utility of the approach for large-scale applications.by John Patrick Enright.Ph.D