Next Generation Data Fusion Architecture

Distributed Real-time Embedded (DRE) systems are increasingly being used in mission-critical domains such as online financial trading, distributed process control, submarine information systems, avionics mission computing, radar processing, and software defined radios. These somewhat disparate application domains all have a similar requirement: to exchange information with predictable latencies, jitter and throughput while preserving application software through technology refresh and insertion cycles. Regardless of the lower cost of commodity COTS hardware components, the program cannot expect to see a decrease in deployment costs if the plan for technology insertion is not carefully considered. Updating the hardware suite whenever the next generation of COTS hardware becomes available will likely cause integrator thrashing as they try to keep pace with the inflow in products while trying to certify each new system iteration. A plan must be formed that takes into account the capabilities available in the commercial marketplace, the needs of the system, and the impacts of performing a technology insertion or refresh to each component. Keeping pace with the commercial marketplace and doing upgrades when it makes sense will minimize the impact on the system’s capabilities and will help manage the total cost of ownership of the program.