Graduation Semester and Year

2015

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Engineering in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Ben Harris

Abstract

Software systems are ubiquitous within aerospace technology. They are essentially the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) of aircraft and satellites. Software systems are a primary component of satellite ground control systems, as well. Similarly, radar systems heavily utilize software systems. The design of aerospace software systems presents challenges outside of traditional aerospace or computer science domains. Mission operability and design constraints are balancing factors critical to the implementation phase of ground control software systems. Therefore, design decisions can often complicate the system architecture. Complexities within the architecture inevitably lead to challenges in the system integration phase. Numerous software source code files need to be integrated together to form a functional software system. The software build, deployment, and installation processes transform these standalone source code files into deliverable software artifacts. Because ground control systems require thorough testing before operational acceptance, software environments are created to repeatedly test and mature the software. The quantity of deployable environments creates a difficulty in efficiently integrating and testing the software. To resolve this issue, we must create an effective and automated solution or tool to configure the software system repeatedly in different environments at a high fidelity. The Configurator tool was designed and chosen as the solution to primarily expedite the software deployment times for multiple environments through an automated and efficient process. The Configurator's output files also generate a high confidence configuration of multiple environments by transforming Systems Engineering design artifact data into deliverable configuration files. This is important as the collection of design artifacts now creates a critical cornerstone for production level build and deploy processes. From these design artifacts, the Configurator creates hundreds of web service endpoints, server configuration files, and database file paths required for the successful configuration of each environment. Without the Configurator's improvement to system enterprise configuration, my critical program milestones would not have been achieved. Early design architecture gaps would not have been discovered. Ultimately, these gaps would have led to high risk factors within software delivery. The Configurator has increased the integrity of each system software build before deployments and installation occur within integration activities. Software deployment and installation times have decreased by a noticeable 40 days in a period of 10 months. During this time period, the Configurator has produced a refined environment configuration for more than a dozen software builds and multiple environments. The Configurator provides more than 200 configuration files which all contribute to the System Software Build. Systems Engineering artifacts now increase the integrity within production level software deployments by standardizing the configuration process. Due to an increase in software integrity, the number of integration and architecture defects has decreased by an impressive 90%.

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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