Sense and Respond Technology Enabling Condition Based Maintenance (CBM)

Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) assets is preferred over the scheduled maintenance because CBM provides a window into the future of the asset"s performance and enables service only when needed. The asset performance indicators captured on both LCS variants must be reduced, transmitted (off-ship), and mined using shore-based predictive analytics. Real-Time Innovations (RTI), Inc. is proposing an extensible data-centric bus architecture to integrate shipboard asset performance data with shore-based predictive analysis tools. To address the interoperability challenge, the solution uses automatic transformation of formally described data models using the Object Management Group (OMG) Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). The proposed approach is based on the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS), which is widely deployed in the Navy including the LCS. The peer-to-peer bus architecture of DDS greatly simplifies plug-n-play application integration by using formally described, normalized data models. The end-to-end solution also includes network protocols equipped with compression algorithms suitable for low-bandwidth ship-to-shore communication. Furthermore, Navy"s Information Assurance (IA) requirements are implemented using the OMG Secure-DDS standard. The proposed solution will improve LCS combat readiness using a truly interoperable data-bus for exchanging CBM data from the ship to shore while reducing distractions to the sailors, standby inventory requirements, and the decision time for the analysts.