3 rd Annual Open Architecture Summit Business Approaches to OA

Andrew Biss

Systems Engineer

Sensis Corporation

3rd Annual Open Architecture SummitBusiness Approaches to OA

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The Need for Open ArchitectureTo avoid spiraling costs and ensure supportability,

the USN has adopted OA core principles• Building a fleet that is interoperable and affordable

To be competitive Sensis recognizes the benefits of OA

• Reducing Time-to-Market and Increasing Cost Savings• Not always a driving requirement for our customers, but a driving

requirement from our internal stakeholders

This has lead to Sensis completing 5 successful SW programs built on OA principles with 3 iterations of OA design

Sensis and the USN have come to the same conclusion from complementary, but different vantage points

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Open Technology Developmentin Sensis Processes

As part of embracing the OA principles, OTD is embedded in our formal processes for development

Standard Operating Procedures and Work Instructions exist specific to ensuring OA is incorporated in SW and HW

Sensis SOP OTD states that the benefits of an OTD strategy are:

1. Enhancing agility to rapidly adapt and modify to user needed capabilities

2. Enhancing competitiveness by lowering cost and minimizing program execution risk

3. Encouraging decentralized innovation, shared discovery and forward-looking design

4. Leveraging external and existing solutions, taking intelligent risk for substantial gains, and factoring in life cycle cost advantages

5. Enabling ease of changes, upgrades, or technology insertion

6. Enabling joint integrated architectures and interoperability with other systems

Sensis requires OA in our development process to be competitive

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Sensis Radar Upgrade Product Line

OTD starts before the program begins• Product Specification is evaluated for capability gaps at

proposal stage• Drives re-use starting at the top-level

requirements/architecture• Benefits of previous development programs are inherent

Architecture based upon OA Core Principles• Key external and internal interfaces are isolated and well-

defined Individual components can be modified without

impacting total architecture• Component designs are based upon life-cycle affordability

and modularity COTS components for servers, comms, and

frequency synthesis• Reusable application software

SW components are written to allow adaptability

Demonstrated 2D/3D S- and L-Band signal processing and AESA components applicable to multiple radar platforms

The result is a system that is adaptable and reconfigurable to address a variety of customer needs

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SW OA Product ApproachCharacteristics of the Open approach to SW

Products include•Platform independence

All Software is built on middleware All software should be capable of “desktop-development”

rather than requiring the host platform Strong APIs with a threading architecture

•Component-Level Publish/Subscribe Increases product reuse and configurability through loose

coupling of components• Isolation of algorithms/functions into configurable libraries

Allows algorithm development and improvement without impacting transport and application framework

OA software approach allows software products to be developed and refreshed independent of HW platform

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Legacy Systems

OPEN

German Luftwaffe Hughes Air Defense Radars

HADR-2000S3D, S-Band Civil/Military Air SurveillancePhased Array PSR integrated with Monopulse SSR

Installation October 2009

UK NATS Watchman

SPE-30002D, S-Band Civil Air Surveillance

3 Sites Commissioned by UK CAA as of 2010

Canadian DND ASR-31+5 ASR-3 SPS and TX

2D, L-Band Civil/Military Air SurveillanceDual Redundant System with a Solid-State Transmitter

Installation July 2010

An OA Radar Signal Processor has been developed that is applicable to Legacy as well as State-of-the-Art systems

Signal Processor Evolution

Modern Mobile AESA Radar

CLOSED

State-of-the-Art

Global Legacy Rotating Radars

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Minimizing SW Development Risk

Striving for widely supported, open source technologies as SW components and SW platforms reduce the impact during technology upgrades

• Long-Term Supportability is correlated to Relative Openness

• Allows the HW components of the product to be refreshed without major impact to the SW components

Long-term supportability

Widely supported, Open Source

General Public License (GPL), Lesser GPL (LGPL)

Military-targetedapplications

Commercial applications (COTS)

ACE+TAOLinux

Postgres, SQLite

Fiber

SRIOVPX, VXS

PCIe

APM, IABM

Intel

PowerPC

Solaris

VxWorks

XERCES

Rel

ativ

e O

penn

ess

Choosing Open Source technologies increases supportability and reduces risk in Total Ownership Cost

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Quantifying OpennessAssessing SW/FW Reuse

• Sensis Work Instruction defines a concrete, repeatable, and consistent method for evaluating the level of reuse of a given component for a given program within Sensis

• Develops a “Reuse Level” that is equivalent to a effort factor to be used in estimating development costs

A series of measurement factors are used to evaluate the modifications required to estimate the level of reuse

• Software, Pedigree, Requirements, Personnel aspects are included in the evaluation

Working with current customer for developing a methodology to evaluate total OA based on specific metrics

Sensis is proactively and continuously reviewing our practices and new innovation

Reuse Types Effort FactorNew 100%L1 Reuse 40%L2 Reuse 15%L3 Reuse 5%

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NewL1L2L3

3-D L-Band Mobile Radar Monopulse Range-Ambiguous Digital Beamforming Single scan hit-to-firm track Embedded SBCs, VxWorks

Practiced OARadar A 3-D S-Band Fixed-Site Radar Sequential lobing Range-Unambiguous Analog Beamforming Multi-scan hit-to-firm track COTS Servers, Linux

Radar B

High-level of reuse is quantifiable and achievable with a configurable, building-block architecture

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HW OA Product ApproachCharacteristics of the Open approach to HW Products include:

• Leverage commercial advancements for technology agility• Afford future growth options in functionality and performance without disruptive and

costly redesigns• Accommodate ready substitution for obsolete components• Employ commonly used standards for key interfaces• All like units interchangeable• No specialized tools or equipment to perform field service

Outcome is validated low production costs for Sensis Open Technology approach for T/R Units

• Derived Open Technology L-Band T/R Unit costs for pilot and full production runs• Detailed bottoms-up costings based on Bill of Materials• Formal Quotations received from all suppliers – identified opportunities for cost

take-outs• Benchmarked against an independently derived production cost for a conventional

T/R Unit prototyped to the same Specification Control Document

Open Technology T/R Unit implementation is fully 1/3 lower in production cost than its conventional design counterpart

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Open Technology T/R Units

Sensis has employed Open Technology for the production of Transmit/Receive (T/R) units

• Major component of a phased array radar antenna• Architected to deliver high performance while being operationally flexible

Demonstrated specification compliant performance Product line philosophy with the Unit and its constituents being advantageous

for multiple systems• Reduction in T/R unit production costs by at least a third

Quotations on competing approaches support this claim Significant as the T/R units represent 50 to 70% of the array cost, which itself

is 60 to 80% of the system cost• Reduction in operational and sustainment costs of up to 50%

Support system operational life-spans in excess of 20 years

Sensis asserts that to fully realize the promise of Open Architecture the principles must extend internal to the Units

• External form/fit/function/interface interchangeability at the unit level is insufficient

Sensis has validated the production cost-savings of OTD for HW components while avoiding vendor-lock and obsolescence

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Resulting Product Characteristics

Sensis capabilities for radar are distinguished by:• Multi-mission capability

Operational flexibility, adaptable, scalable• State-of-the-Art performance

Performance isn’t sacrificed by implementing OA principles• Open Technology for software and hardware configuration items

Modular, platform independent, product line elements• Affordable, sustainable

Low development, acquisition, and support costs. Low technical risk.• Reliable operation

High availability with low mean time to repair• Efficient operation

Low overhead power consumption

Sensis has embraced Open Architecture principles for high performance radar systems – legacy and next generation

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Benefits of an Open Architecture, Product Line Approach

Within the paper “Comparing Acquisition Strategies: Open Architecture vs. Product Lines”1, the following benefits of an OA and Product Line approach are given:

• Cost• Time to Delivery• Elimination of Duplicate Effort• Higher Quality

For Industry these translate internally to the following macro-level benefits:

• Expanding Capability• Increasing Reuse• Reducing Time to Delivery• Development Cost Savings[1] Guertin, N., Clements, P., “Comparing Acquisition Strategies: Open Architecture vs. Product Lines”

Sensis has realized the benefits that the Navy desires