Experience report on successful demonstration of SWIM by three industry partners

Abstract

This paper presents the concept, design, technologies, and implementation of a generic system wide information management platform based on service oriented architecture principles. Together with a number of industrial partners, FREQUENTIS conducted a successful first implementation of the still to be developed further European System Wide Information Management (SWIM) Infrastructure dedicated to the definition of the European SWIM Technical Architecture, which will allow seamless interoperability and information sharing of future European Air Traffic Management (ATM) Systems. To cover the needs of existing research projects like Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) or Collaborative Actions for Renovation of Air Traffic Systems (CARATS), FREQUENTIS works on a reference architecture with the goal of reusability across domains. This paper describes the current results of SESAR SWIM in the form of requirements and capability definitions that a compatible information system needs to fulfill. Those capabilities are basically derived from major topics of interest within the SWIM Technical Infrastructure such as interoperable communication, security, and governance. Following requirements and capabilities, FREQUENTIS creates a conceptual architecture utilizing artifact types from several commonly used architectural views (structural, behavioral, deployment) depicting logical structure and interaction among the major sub-systems and their components, as well as information exchange flows. Based on previous logical architecture considerations, a list of appropriate technology standards is given. The system will be deployed either as an extension to new services of certain service providers or in case of existing legacy services as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) enabler. Therefore, the possible fields of use are beyond the SESAR Air Traffic Management SWIM scenario.