A happy firmware/software development medium

In projects that are size, weight, and power (SWAP)-constrained, firmware and software development teams often negotiate trade-offs on complexity. Development efforts for radio firmware on the Frontier Radio, an APL Software Defined Radio (SDR) product, set a goal to improve the testability and integration between firmware and software. The Frontier Radio is baselined for the Europa Clipper project, a NASA mission in development jointly by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Radio firmware development aims to implement a regression testing pyramid approach in both the simulation and bench testing environments, building the infrastructure necessary to emulate flight software capabilities early-on in the firmware development cycle. Reaching this goal has entailed several key advancements spanning both the software and firmware teams. We've developed a custom command protocol designed for real-time control of a target processor bus, as well as implementation of DMA controllers to support this protocol. In the Ground Support Equipment (GSE), an expanded user testing interface in MATLAB has been built, providing the tools necessary to test flight software sequences in real-time over a debug link. Development of a custom VHDL testing suite has led to a solid base for simulation regression testing. Definition of a JAVA tool, the Register Map Tool, manages XML register map databases, and ties together dependencies across the different environments. This set of improvements has opened many new doors in development and testing capabilities on both the firmware and flight software sides, encouraging earlier flight software development/integration and reducing the risk of unforeseen integration efforts.