An evolutionary approach to the construction of new-generation software-intensive satellite control systems

In the development of on-board embedded real-time systems an important proportion of the critical requirements arise as second-order requirements. The feasibility of the logical model, initially established to meet a relatively stable set of user requirements, needs to be reconfirmed in the face of the more elusive implementation constraints and the limitations imposed by the execution environment. This phenomenon will arguably be made harsher by the increasing urge to at least halve the duration of the overall development schedule while inflating the size and the complexity of the software product. Arguably, these demands are well served by an evolutionary approach which augments the expressive power of object-oriented design method with verifiable real-time attributes, properties and constraints to provide for a unified conceptual design framework suitable for the combined, iterative and incremental definition of the logical and physical model of the system.