Rehosting test program sets for legacy electronics: a test requirements-based approach

The service lives of weapon systems and their electronic subsystems are being extended well beyond the affordable lives of the test equipment used to support them. The increasing commercial item content of these testers is shortening their product life cycles by increasing the frequency of obsolescence issues and the need for configuration changes. In addition, as the Department of Defense searches for ways to reduce the cost of operating and sustaining its aging tester infrastructure, the replacement of peculiar, obsolete testers with common, more efficient and cost-effective testers becomes an effective tactic. These factors all increase the probability that test programs for legacy electronics will need to be rehosted at least once during their service lives. This paper presents a test requirements-based approach to the design and verification of rehosted TPSs as a method to address these challenges. The approach will be to express test requirements, extracted from legacy TPSs and available product data, in a consistent information-based model, the Test Requirements Model (TeRM). This will, in turn, provide the TPS engineer with an objective and consistent basis for validating the rehosted TPS as a natural byproduct of the reengineering process. It will be shown that this approach can address TPS rehost challenges as well as extend to the reengineering of obsolete electronics. The service lives of weapon systems and their electronic subsystems are being extended well beyond the affordable lives of the test equipment used to support them. The increasing commercial item content in these testers is shortening their product life cycles and increasing the frequency of obsolescence issues and configuration changes. In addition, as the Department of Defense searches for ways to reduce the cost of operating and sustaining its aging infrastructure, replacing peculiar, obsolete testers with common, more cost effective and efficient testers becomes an effective tactic