Applying system of systems engineering to enable component-level modularity in communications systems

Communications systems fielded by US-DoD and commercial organizations are often highly customized by individual programs and vendors. These systems are typically integrated into larger individual (system-of-systems) platforms one platform at a time. While such systems perform very well for their designed use, many do not consider enterprise requirements such as scalability, and aggregation of control and management in their design. Further, platform-by-platform customization of communications results in interoperability and interchangeability drift, where terminals cannot communicate with those from other generations, or cannot be swapped out at the component level. The end result is a set of system silos requiring completely separate and vendor-unique ancillary equipment and control infrastructure. Based on a survey of existing terminal management capabilities and trends in platform requirements, we developed a common, layered management interface structure for communications terminals, making them an interchangeable component of a system of systems (SoS). This interface allows an evolutionary path from the silo infrastructure to one that can aggregate control and management functions. By emphasizing control of interfaces between system elements and external systems, we mitigate risks to the SoS[1][2]. Additionally, working with terminal vendors and other stakeholders, we developed a management information base (MIB)[6] in accordance with this structure. Lastly, we developed a SNMP-based terminal controller connected into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a SOA service interface, and used this to test two vendors' SNMP agents implementing the MIB on their terminals. These tests validated the MIB and demonstrated its utility as a common control interface (CCI). Having validated the MIB, this test platform can be extended to validate subsequent implementations of both the SNMP agent and terminal controllers as units under test (UUT).