Application of modeling techniques for on-board satellite applications: Configuration control and deployment and verification of temporal constraints

Slides

Software development projects for on-board satellite systems face numerous challenges. First, employing different configured deployment platforms is widespread during the engineering process. In particular, it is common to deploy and test the software in various engineering and simulated environments before it can be qualified and, if the results fulfill the specification, finally deployed into the radiation-hardened or radiation-tolerant flight processor module. Furthermore, the on-board software can be modified and adapted to follow the eventual hardware evolutions in various missions of a particular space program. The adaptation of the various software components to the deployment platforms is achieved through parameterization. To correctly manage the numerous parameters, controlling the configuration of a wide range of software deployment scenarios on different deployment platforms is essential.

In addition, the on-board software must follow a validation and verification plan that, among other things, must provide evidence such as, for example, those related to the fulfillment of non-functional requirements. This evidence is obtained using different analysis tools that must be integrated within the development process by modeling the components that form the software system using the artifacts defined by the input models of the analysis tools. These procedures are costly, mainly due to the need to trace the changes made to the software to the different input models of the analysis tools and multiple configured deployment platforms.

This presentation describes the model-driven solutions that were adopted to facilitate the development of on-board satellite software within the development project of the instrument control unit of the Energetic Particle Detector of the Solar Orbiter mission. These solutions have facilitated the integration of tools for the verification of temporal constraints, on the one hand, and the configuration management of the different models developed during the project's different stages up to the final flight model.