Functional Tests Optimization (FTO) For Satellites
- Paper number
IAC-07-D1.3.06
- Author
Mr. Meidad Pariente, I.A.I., Israel
- Coauthor
Dr. Raz Tamir, Israel Aerospace Industries. Ltd., Israel
- Year
2007
- Abstract
In today’s Space industry the role of the verification and validation (V\&V) process has taken center stage. This is primarily due to the fact that in today's competitive market where projects are forced to cut down time to market, the systems engineer’s job of fully verifying and validating the system has become an almost “mission impossible”. A previous paper introduced a novel V\&V plan, such that will enable the system’s engineer to fully validate and verify the system while taking into consideration his minimal and dwindling resources. This approach has it’s roots in what is known in the industry as the IFT (Integrated Functional Testing), where the functionality of the fully integrated system is tested. The testing is performed against a testing matrix which is a combination of the requirements matrix and the system’s software capabilities. The IFT approach was tested on a variety of GEO and LEO satellites including "AMOS-1", "AMOS-2","OFEQ-5" and "TECSAR". Despite of it's many advantages the IFT approach still has a challenge of choosing the proper scenarios to be simulated. It was demonstrated that a successful implementation of IFT depends on close familiarity with operating methods of the system both at the user level and at the engineering level. It was found that an insufficient familiarity with the satellite systems and operational logic might result in choosing a wrong set of scenarios, thus reducing the confidence level of satellite's functionallity. The FTO confronts this issue by implementing models and tools from a mathematical branch of 'graph theory'. By mapping the scenarios selection problem into two-dimensional graph domain containing nodes and edges, it is possible to mathematically ensure the selection of the minimal set of scenarios that will cover all system states and pass through the most critical transitions between these states. Furthermore, the FTO approach enables the deterministic calculation of the confidence level of a selected set of scenarios that will be used in Satellite's V\&V. This calculation enables a simple tradeoff where the number of tested scenarios can be adjusted in a way that will optimally fit the project constraints (time and money) while immediately reflecting the changes into the confidence score of the functional tests process. FTO ensures that the minimal set of scenarios will cover all the system states using the most important transitions. It is fully integrated into some promising system verification approaches such as IFT (Integrated Functional Tests). The implementation of FTO algorithm as a software tool will automate the test and verification process by shortening test periods, cutting testing costs and producing an objective measure of system functionality confidence.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-D1.3.06.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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