Experiences in open architecture research and experimentation

Abstract

As open architecture (OA) standards become increasingly important to the Department of Defense (DoD) and in particular, the United States Air Force (USAF), so too does the need to be able to exercise, experiment, and validate interoperability with these standards. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Sensor Directorate (AFRL/RYWA) has built an architecture and integration event called the Integrated Demonstration and Experimentation Architecture (IDEA) event. IDEA provides a realistic, adaptable government-owned reference architecture with capabilities to measure, control, and document performance benefits (or costs) for potential adopting programs; impacts of technology insertions; and insights into future OA standard growth. The IDEA event included industry and government organizations, that came together to demonstrate advanced integration capabilities in a rapid development environment using OAs, such as Open Mission Systems. The reference architecture includes multiple mission package subsystems and specialized tools for integration. The use of IDEA events to promote the evolution and integration of OA standards to meet current and future program needs will continue. This paper discusses the reference architecture used, the layout of the mission scenario for testing, and how the event was composed.