Merit-Based Architecture for the Automatic Selection and Composition of Services in SOA-Based C4ISR Systems; Doctoral thesis

摘要

Department of Defense (DoD) Command and Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems are responsible for supplying the right information at the right time to the warfighter. This dissertation presents a methodology for automating and realizing time-critical C4ISR applications. We introduce World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliant services into the planning and battle management processes where a computer can be more efficient and more effective than a human operator. We demonstrate our approach using ballistic missile defense (BMD) as a case study of a system in which the software services comprising the command, control, and battle management (C2BM) element of the BMD system need to operate within hard real-time constraints. We show the realization of time- critical C4ISR applications via continuously orchestrating individual services based on the automatically processing operational orders (OPORDs) and reports for the system to self-regulate itself. The system monitors, selects, and composes sub-services using a merit-based score until the mission stated in the OPORD is complete. The processing of the OPORDs for use by the C2BM element initiates and preserves the cyclic process of the kill chain used to negate threat ballistic missiles. To select and orchestrate services at runtime, we extended the current Web Services Description Language (WSDL) standard to encompass measures of performance (MOP) and measures of effectiveness (MOE). In our approach the WSDL-advertised measures are continuously updated based on runtime monitoring, creating an historical basis-of-confidence for each of the services. We demonstrate the generation and use by the C2BM of continuously updating service-selection criteria. Our composition language includes a software design pattern for use in ensuring time-critical processes complete within their time budget.