Investigation into the Methods of Modeling and Testing Network-Based Data Acquisition Systems, 10-R9746

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Principal Investigators
Stephen Kilpatrick
Jeremy Price

Inclusive Dates:  08/01/07 – 12/01/07

Background - The use of Internet Protocol (IP) networking to acquire, manage and analyze data for test and evaluation is growing in popularity. In the past, IP hardware was a bad choice for data acquisition systems. However, with the advent of better technologies and the popularity of the Internet, IP networking is coming into favor in the test and evaluation community. A network-based approach provides the flexibility and scalability that previous acquisition systems could not support.

After discussions with domain and modeling experts, it was determined that the best way to capture the information relevant to network-based test and evaluation environment was to use a tool interchange format (TIF) known as the integrated network enhanced telemetry (iNET) metadata definition language (MDL). The MDL is a government effort that envisions one standard interchange format. Many vendors are in the process of transitioning to use this emerging standard format.

Approach - Our objective in this project was to construct a method of modeling and testing these network-based data acquisition systems and develop a demonstration prototype. We had three main tasks during this project:

  • Modeling – Use model-based techniques to represent complex systems in a simple domain-specific manner
     
  • Testing – Investigate a model-driven solution to reliably and reproducibly simulate the data flow of the network
     
  • Prototyping – Develop a network-based environment that shows the benefits of our modeling and testing tools.

Accomplishments -

  • Completed a prototype demonstration
     
  • Presented the paper "NETGEN: A Model-Driven Tool for Rapid Prototyping and Simulation of Network-Based Flight Test Systems" at the 2007 International Telemetering Conference (ITC)
     
  • Won additional funding to develop a reference suite simulation for the ongoing iNET project.

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