Application of COTS for early, low cost, avionics system testbed

The use of flight hardware breadboards to construct an avionics subsystem testbed has been very successfully used on past Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) projects. These testbeds provide valuable early integration experience with the flight hardware and software operating together. Commercial off the shelf (COTS) based test systems are integrated with the flight hardware, breadboards to create an Avionics testbed platform. The breadboard system has typically consisted of custom-built hardware that was quite expensive and time consuming to build and maintain. With level or decreasing NASA budgets, and faster, better, cheaper project mentality, the flight hardware breadboard has become a target of Federal budget cuts. Since the custom breadboards are not financially feasible, but the need for an early development avionics testbed still apparent, the role of the COTS hardware was expanded to include flight avionics functions. As an added benefit, the COTS hardware can be used as the basis for the flight hardware design.