TTNT: Avionics & Government Case Study

Sectors: Government, Avionics
Development Model: Waterfall, Iterative
Project Team: Software Engineers
Languages” C, C++, CORBA
Technologies and Tools: Bash Shell, XML, PowerPC, TCP/IP Ethernet, Integrity, Linux, Windows, Subversion, ClearCase, TRAC, MS Office, ClearQuest, OpNet, Modeler, DOORs

Background
Genova Technologies supported a DARPA program to demonstrate a tactical airborne network. A few main goals of the demonstration were to perform dynamic awareness, multiple levels of security, and low latency data rates. Later in the prototype lifecycle, the tactical airborne waveform was ported to a Software Common Architecture (SCA) waveform and deployed for use.

Challenges, Successes, and Lessons Learned
One of the problems early in the development process was understanding the steps for proper certification with the Department of Defense (DoD) and the requirements to meet that certification. Genova engineers performed the research required to understand the two types of certification, and identified the requirements and trade-offs for each. This information was provided to the program managers to help them make an informed decision on what level of certification to achieve.

Team Composition and Responsibilities
This project started in the Contractor’s R&D division and migrated over to its Government division. Genova’s engineers worked alongside the Contractor‘s engineers to perform tasks both on and off site.

Genova supported the Contractor team working on the tactical waveform development. This network developed into a highly sought after waveform by many companies and defense agencies for providing high performance state of the art wireless communications for the military. Genova worked with the Contractor to deliver Phase 3 of the tactical network as it was entering a testing phase. Genova also supported the development of the Phase 3 waveform into a Software Common Architecture SCA compliant waveform. SCA has been decreed to be the software architecture to conform to for all future waveform development, in particular on Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) equipment.

Genova’s tasks on this project included:
• Researching the requirements for passing SCA and JTRS certification and the differences between the two certifications. This research detailed the steps for each certification path, the estimated amount of effort to meet each certification, and the pros and cons of each certification.
• Software design of SCA version of tactical network waveform including CORBA interfaces that comply with the SCA specification
• Creating a waveform porting plan document. This document describes the impact of porting the waveform from one processing platform to another and a rough order of magnitude estimate on the effort to perform such a port.
• Assisting with verification of the core framework for compliance with SCA. The core framework is the foundation required for any waveform that strives to be SCA compliant.
• Integrating the waveform with the core framework on the Linux-based processor board
• Developing XML configuration needed for complete compliance with SCA
• Developing test applications needed to test many aspects of the waveform
• Performing performance profiling of latency of the Tactical Network SCA waveform
• Performing performance profiling of the CORBA interfaces of the Tactical Network SCA waveform
• Participating in peer reviews of documentation and software
• Delivering software development to enable modeling and simulation of Tactical Network software within the OpNet modeling environment.
• Developing software to obtain performance metrics of the Tactical Network software.
• Completing gate reviews

Applicable Technologies Used
• C++
• CORBA
• Bash Shell
• XML
• C
• PowerPC
• TCP/IP
• Ethernet
• Integrity
• Linux
• Windows
• Subversion
• ClearCase
• TRAC
• MS Office
• ClearQuest
• OpNet Modeler
• DOORs

Skills

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