Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A18-110

Description

To address the Army’s need for a unified approach to virtually integrate avionics systems, verify assertions of correctness, and identify points of failure, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) is developing a Unified Analysis and Design Simulation Toolchain (UADST). UADST uses system specification in Architectural Analysis and Design Language (AADL) and behavioral specifications defined by AADL annexes. The system specification, which contains component-wise behavior information, is simulated in UADST through Monte-Carlo methods. During simulation, performance statistics are collected and compared with expected behaviors to detect runtime deficiencies and integration problems. Key features are virtual integration achieved by system-of-system modeling/simulation and incorporated hardware/software in-the-loop simulations. UADST can identify errors resulting from interaction across multiple AADL annexes through unified analysis of system-of-systems. The virtual integration capability in UADST can detect integration errors early in the product lifecycle during the system design resulting in unprecedented cost savings. In Phase I, POC demonstrated the feasibility of UADST and reached TRL-4 by demonstrating a prototype system that detects integration errors that are undetectable when components are analyzed in isolation. In Phase II, POC will refine the Phase I prototype to TRL-6 through integration and evaluation with real-world avionics use-cases and again demonstrate its functionality on AADL models.