Authors:
Julie Street Fant
1
;
Hassan Gomaa
2
and
Robert G. Pettit
3
Affiliations:
1
George Mason University and The Aerospace Corporation, United States
;
2
George Mason University, United States
;
3
The Aerospace Corporation, United States
Keyword(s):
Software Product Lines (SPL), UML, Software Architectural Design Patterns, Unmanned Space Flight Software.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Cross-Feeding between Data and Software Engineering
;
Model-Driven Engineering
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
Abstract:
The unmanned space flight software (FSW) domain contains a significant amount of variability within its
required capabilities. Although all FSW execute commands from the ground station to control the
spacecraft, there is significant amount of variability in the volume of commands that must be processed, the
amount of control given to the ground station versus onboard autonomy, and the amount and type of
hardware that requires controlling. This degree of architectural variability makes it difficult to develop a
FSW software product line (SPL) architecture that covers the all possible variations. In order to address this
challenge, this paper presents a SPL approach for FSW SPLs that manages variability at a higher level of
granularity using software architectural design patterns and requires less modeling during the SPL
engineering phase. Specifically it describes how variable design patterns can be interconnected to form
FSW SPL software architectures. The design patterns are tailore
d to individual FSW applications during
application engineering. The paper describes in detail the application and validation of this approach.
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