A Layered Software Architecture for Hard Real Time (HRT) Embedded Systems

This is a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A156104. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: The current state of the art techniques to describe and implement a hard real time embedded software architecture for missile systems range from inadequate to totally non-existent. Most of the existing software implementations within such systems consist of hand coded functionality, optimized for speed, with little or no thought to long term maintainability, and extensibility. Utilizing current state of the art software development technology, the first ever software architecture for hard real time missile software has been designed and successfully demonstrated. This component based layered abstraction pattern approach to software architecture revolutionizes reduced development time, cost, provides an order of magnitude decrease in error, and is the first such software architecture to function within the hard time constraints of the most extreme cases related to missile systems. Additionally, componentization of functionality allows for porting of software developed for one missile to any other missile with no modification. Hardware obsolescence is overcome by software abstraction layers which isolate the hardware instance from the software functionality providing a rapid, low cost transition of software from one instance of missile hardware to another. The end result of this research is a software architecture demonstrating the capability of managing complex functionality in an accurate, quantifiable, and cost effective manner.