Functional Allocation Trades Between Hardware and Software

It is expected that the US military forces will be facing many new, unexpected types of mission from combat operations to humanitarian assistance and disaster recovery (HA/DR). To be able to accomplish such missions, the military will require"resilient systems"of all kinds digital, electrical and mechanical. The development of such new systems requires new design tools that can support the designer in exploring solution spaces and analyzing the suitability of a specific solution for a specific mission or task, as well as for a class of potential future missions and tasks. Such a capability is referred to as"tradespace exploration". This project will develop a prototype of a tool to support the designer of a resilient system in allocating functionalities to either hardware or software. The tool will be based on the principles of optimization and will provide a rationalization for the particular selections of the allocations. The tool will utilize models expressed in both UML and in semantic languages, like OWL. The designer will be able to enter problem formulations, descriptions of functions, systems and components. Additionally, this project will analyze and formalize various allocation problems and investigate algorithms for specific problems. VIStology will be collaborating with Raytheon, especially in the development of use cases and scenarios, as well as in the evaluation of the tool.