Key characteristics of synthetic instrumentation to facilitate TPS transportability

When an existing test program set (TPS) needs to be supported on new test system, the DoD has been moving away from the traditional process of re-hosting to the more streamlined process of transporting TPSs. Whether the reason for change is due to test system obsolescence, or a change in weapons system operational requirements, TPS transport offers large cost and schedule savings by preserving the original TPS hardware and software development costs. Synthetic instrumentation opens the door to new classes of instrumentation, new test techniques, and new test system architectures that enable significant savings in system footprint, system cost, and test time while providing many of the features necessary to meet the challenging test system requirements brought on by TPS transport. This paper discusses the issues involved with TPS transportability from both the compatibility with legacy test systems perspective and from future obsolescence mitigation by examining the changing requirements placed on test instrumentation and systems, and the key characteristics of synthetic instrumentation necessary to meet those requirements