Real Time Fault Tolerant Computing for Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD)

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is looking for advanced capabilities for real-time software detection, correction, and compensation of computing system faults. Fault tolerance capabilities will be especially important when mobile platforms and new users are introduced to Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) as part of integration with Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) elements, resulting in conditions such as limited bandwidth, increased latencies, and higher error rates that will stress existing fault tolerance capabilities. This effort will develop innovative algorithms, agents, and services that deliver enhanced fault tolerance capabilities to applications in support of GMD Fire Control (GFC). These capabilities will be implemented in a middleware software layer that addresses Quality of Service (QoS) and mission readiness requirements for GMD by providing monitoring services that will track the performance and health of components within the system, resource management and routing techniques that will enable effective employment of redundant resources to overcome the effects of faults and failures, and a new analytical framework for evaluating fault tolerance effectiveness in combined hardware/software systems. As part of the Phase II effort, we will work to integrate and prove our technology within Boeing’s Total Domain environment, the information management backbone for the GFC External System Interface.