2011-04-19

TriVector Engineer Simulates Rocket Communication System Using MathWorks

The Challenge:  Analyze the Time Latency of Health and Status Information aboard NASA's Ares I Rocket.

The Solution:  Use MathWorks Simulink and SimEvents to model packet-level communications, run discrete-event simulations, and access end-to-end latencies.

The Results: 

• Requirements validated one year sooner.  "By modeling discrete events with SimEvents, we were able to simulate packet-level transactions well before hardware was available," says Kerry Alexander, senior engineer at TriVector Services, Inc.  "If NASA had to build hardware first, verification of the timing requirements could have been delayed by a year."
• Timing specification problems uncovered.  "Our SimEvents model provided a picture of the entire system as well as detailing timing results that would have been impossible to obtain using a spreadsheet," says Alexander.  "This approach enabled us to report missing requirements to NASA for refinements."
• Latency analysis results communicated visually. "We created MATLAB plots that made it much easier to visualize and communicate our results," notes Alexander.

Read the full story at Desktop Engineering, USA Today, and the MathWorks Web sites.