Delivering on obsolescence protection

With the growing need to reduce operational costs, many aerospace and defense companies are focusing on lowering the overall lifecycle costs of test platforms. The difficulty of this challenge is often compounded by the need to sustain test systems over the multi-decade life of the supported platform - a requirement that typically increases the long-term maintenance costs of an aging automated test system (ATS). In many cases, the shortcomings of existing test system architectures contribute to the problem. An alternative approach, already in use, addresses those shortcomings through an efficient, interactive platform for creating flexible system frameworks. This platform simplifies the process of replacing discontinued instruments with either similar devices or alternatives such as modular instruments or abstract instruments. Most test-system architectures typically require standardized hardware, software, instrument interfaces or communication protocols. In contrast, the "managed integration" alternative uses a services-based approach to enable inclusion of wide-ranging languages, drivers, interfaces, protocols, test executives and instrument types into hybrid systems that easily combine new and existing elements. To mitigate instrument or software obsolescence, this services-based platform completely decouples the hardware and software. This allows component connections to be configured (e.g., created and deleted) at runtime via subscription without compilation, linking, or pausing of the system. Thus, when an instrument must be replaced, it can be hot-swapped by changing the connections even if its predecessor used a different communication protocol.