Open systems architecture solutions for military avionics testing

Raytheon makes extensive usage of open systems architecture methods in developing STE (special test equipment) for testing military avionics equipment. Such usage has resulted in significant cost and schedule savings in the development of production test equipment for radar and infrared systems. With open systems architectures, a test system can be assembled using COTS products. This brings economies of scale to test equipment, which is normally built in very low quantities. Therefore the potential cost savings due to COTS usage is proportionately much greater in STE than in the higher volume avionics systems that are tested. A second major benefit of using off the shelf products is that test system development schedule cycle time is greatly reduced. This paper describes the application of open systems architectures to avionics testing. The following major architectures are surveyed: VMEbus; VXIbus; IEEE GPIB; IEEE 1149.1 JTAG Test Bus; 1553 military bus; fibre channel; COTS test applications software