Capability-Driven Architecture

Current and projected military program requirements often exceed budget and schedule constraints, requiring innovative solutions to integrate new technology into multiple differing platforms. An ideal example is the U.S. Army’s requirements to integrate common avionics equipment onto dissimilar manned and unmanned rotorcraft.

Our Capability-Driven Architecture (CDA™) patent process originated when we helped the U.S. Army address the complex challenge of integrating a variety of common avionics onto multiple unrelated aircraft hardware/software architectures while reducing life cycle costs. TES successfully developed and demonstrated CDA for radio control as CDA Radio Control (CDA-RC) for military rotorcraft systems.

The CDA approach emphasizes the integration of capabilities rather than integration of the specific systems, sub-systems, or hardware. CDA design provides a common interface to a category of similar devices, much like desktop computer applications have a common interface to the myriad of computer printers and other peripherals, which also acts as a buffer from product changes.

CDA works by isolating the software from differences between various platforms and avionics. By isolating device control software from differences between platforms, the software becomes platform independent and reusable across the platforms.

TES’ CDA features include:

• Platform independence
• Middleware extensions for common application development
• Scalable data sharing
• Fault-tolerance and “hand-offs” fail-over
• Data localization
• Data persistence by storing the data to a ‘disk’
• Quality of Service (QoS)
• Security support for data

The CDA architecture can be applied to a diverse set of capabilities including communications, navigation, sensors, actuators, etc. It is one of the few open systems based on the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) technical reference architecture systems that can claim software reuse for safety/mission-critical applications aligned with the RTCA DO-178C and the FAA’s AC 20-148 guidelines.

CDA also eliminates ad hoc and stovepipe system development that cause duplication of effort across the various platforms for integrating the same type of equipment, saving time and money.

TES continues to support U.S. Army FACE-aligned programs. TES expects our CDA capability to revolutionize how the military develops and verifies military applications.