Architecture of a management system for wideband SATCOM enterprise terminal facility elements

Abstract

Management of the devices in a Wideband SATCOM enterprise earth terminal facility (ETF) is currently fragmented among multiple systems, and some of these legacy systems provide only limited functionality. This paper describes the architecture of a consolidated system to manage the elements of an ETF. Such a system can offer a number of benefits. First, the ETF management system can provide a consolidated, flexible “northbound” interface to one or more higher-level, centralized management systems, replacing legacy monitoring and control orderwires and bringing the flexibility of the Internet Protocol to extend richer management visibility outside of the terminal facility while avoiding the use of expensive SATCOM resources for management overhead when terrestrial IP paths are available This interface will be built using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles and web services technologies, in accordance with current practice within the community of stakeholders in the system. The ETF management system can offer local operations staff a more complete operational picture of the terminal facilities and the services supported by the facility. The proposed management system will replace some of the multiple existing management systems, and interface with others. Finally, the system can locally store the administrative state of devices in the facility, allowing restoral of device configuration in case of replacement or repair. The locally-stored administrative state may also be imported or exported to the management system. This system state “cache” feature can serve as a basis for a future policy-based management capability.