Application of function-to-platform mapping to space-based surveillance system architectural design

An end-to-end integrated simulation of a space-based surveillance system, sponsored by the Air Force Brilliant Eyes (BE) System Program Office (SPO), was developed at the National Test Facility (NTF) and Nichols Research Corporation (NRC), Colorado Springs, Colorado. The simulation, called BESim, is sufficiently flexible and adaptable to be rapidly reconfigured to model various baseline architectural concepts and assess resulting system performance and resource allocation. The architecture independence is accomplished through “mappable” functions in an object-oriented framework. The feature, termed function-to-platform mapping (FPM) allows the user to distribute functions to various locations in the system. Subsequent impacts to system performance, communications and data-processing requirements, can be measured. FPM also allows functional component distribution through dynamic reconfiguration. This paper describes the FPM development philosophy and examples of FPM application to space-based surveillance system architectural design through analysis of communications load and message handling