System of systems integration and test

Abstract

The environment in many contemporary organizations, including the US Department of Defense, has changed and evolved such that operations now requires successful joint integration and interoperability of multiple complex systems to achieve an integrated operating capability. Many of these complex systems were not necessarily designed to communicate with one another, and there are other interesting problems encountered when not properly integrating them where the goal is to establish an integrated system of systems (SoS) capability. There has been very little research with respect to the integration and testing of SoS and, in particular, verification and validation activities to assure that the systems are successfully integrated to achieve the integrated capability, mission, and satisfy requirements.

This paper describes an approach to SoS integration and testing, including an evolutionary SoS overarching test process, driven by capabilities-based testing, for reducing integration risks when engineering a SoS. The effectiveness of the approach is validated by means of a case study. This paper describes several contributions:

a system requirements approach based on three models, top-down decomposition, horizontal threads-based analysis, and bottoms-up operational capability reengineering;

a cross-program independent verification, validation, and test process: and

key systems engineering lessons learned and learning principles on the basis of the case study.

The major intent of this effort is to obtain an overarching SoS integration and test process that will enable risk reduction before the SoS is operationally deployed.