Intelligent System for Abstraction and Integration of Instrumentation Hardware

KBSI proposes to design, develop, and deploy technologies to radically re-engineer how instrumentation and flight test engineers perform various design, validation, development, verification, and management of aircraft T&E instrumentation subsystem. Our focus is to use the concept of hardware abstraction for specifying, interconnecting, and testing various hardware components. In particular, we propose to develop the Instrumentation Hardware Abstraction Language (IHAL), an XML-based instrumentation hardware abstraction language that can support the definition of functional characteristics of any instrumentation subsystem at any functional or physical hierarchy as well as the physical, electrical, and protocol characteristics of digital interfaces among these components. We will also develop a prototype component-based Intelligent System for Abstraction and Integration of Instrumentation Hardware (ISAIIH) that will allow the user to specify an instrumentation system or subsystem in terms of IHAL. ISAIIH will also support the mixing and matching of existing COTS and GOTS hardware components based on their characteristics and the overall requirements of the required instrumentation that is being designed. Finally, we will demonstrate integration of ISAIIH components into commercial Instrumentation support systems and will document the methodological changes required by instrumentation engineers in using IHAL and ISAIIH.