Digital Mission Engineering for Characterizing System Performance Needs

A case study focused on an Avalanche Search and Rescue (ASAR) Mission with the proposed inclusion of a spotter drone is used to understand an approach to quantifying system performance requirements. Digital Engineering tools including Cameo, Ansys STK, ModelCenter, and MATLAB are used in this study to offer a repeatable, flexible analysis workflow from which “what if” questions might be proposed and answered. Multi-Objective Decision Analysis (MODA) is applied to tradeoff mission measures of effectiveness (MOEs) based off mission engineering analysis. A solution space of valid system and mission configurations is produced by stochastically analyzing system parameters and mission inputs. The result is a set of performance requirements that may be used to define an ASAR spotter drone. By defining the requirements based on the solution space, the requirements are informed by system configurations that are technically achievable, quantifiably support the mission objective, and establishes an extensible framework by which system maturation may be validated against later in the development lifecycle.