Variability-Aware Design of Space Systems: Variability Modelling, Configuration Workflow and Research Directions

Abstract

Designing spacecraft such as satellites is known as an extremely difficult problem. It requires complex decision making at different concerns from mission requirements to system architectures. Such complexity might lead to design system architectures that are not feasible in practice or do not fulfil the requirements. Moreover, the lack of automation to assess high-level designs reduce the benefits of the early design phases by missing more suitable designs and increasing the design time. In this paper we discuss potential research directions and propose a potential framework that aims to i) drive the engineers in the different design steps ii) capture the feasible system architectures regarding the requirements and constraints, iii) refine and assess selected architectures through simulations. Our framework is model-driven and built on two complementary modules. The first module is a configurator based on attributed features models that support engineers in the design process of system architectures. Second, a simulation engine refines and assess automatically the selected system architectures with respect to the requirements.