MINUTES

Committee on Automatic Test Systems for Defence

2013-2 Meeting 21 st November 2013

Venue: Astrium, Portsmouth Start: 10:00 am Chair: Malcolm Brown DE&S –TLS TM Development Secretary: Terry Coles Cassidian Test Engineering Services

Those present:

Alex Barrett MBDA (UK) Andrew Parkinson Teradyne Ashley Hulme Independent Consultant Chris Gorringe Cassidian Test Engineering Services Graeme Philpott Selex ES Graham Ward EADS Astrium Ian Collins Aeroflex Ian Matthews National Instruments Ian Tonge Serco Technical and Assurance Services James Gibson Rohde & Schwarz (UK) Jean-Cristophe Hertzog MBDA Group (France) Keith Surrell Aeroflex Lee Pater EADS Astrium Malcolm J Brown EADS Astrium Malcolm Brown DE&S – Head of ATS Mike Davis SSBV Pete Cassidy DSG Peter Corbett EADS Astrium Ralph Green EADS Astrium Robert McAndrew Selex ES Roger Lowther EADS Astrium Stephen Roe Cassidian Test Engineering Services Stephen Wallace DSG Terry Coles Cassidian Test Engineering Services

1. APOLOGIES

Apologies for absence were received from: Adrian Carter MBDA (UK) Alain Vervin Teradyne Alan Guare Selex ES Anand Jain National Instruments Bartoleme Lozano Ceron Airbus Military Bill Tully MBDA (UK) Chris Hailes Rolls-Royce Aero Engines Controls Chris Roebuck SSBV Fernando Manrique Indra Graham Strachan DE&S – AVR5 Hans Hopf Sekas Howard Saward Cassidian Test & Services Jochen Wolle Rohde & Schwarz (GmbH) Keith Ellis AKE Consultants Keith Randall Rohde & Schwarz (UK) Marvin Rozner Aeroflex (US) Paul Fowler Raytheon Penri Jones Cassidian Test & Services Peter Lawson Gambica Richard Baldwin Terotest Richard Padley GE Aviation Steve Brenner Terotest Steve Kelly DSG Terry Roblett MBDA (UK) Terry Tinsley Aeroflex Test Solutions Tom Phillips Selex ES William Sinclair Selex ES

2. INTRODUCTIONS

The Chair opened the meeting by welcoming all present. He commented that it was gratifying to the continued strong support for the Meeting.

He thanked Astrium for kindly hosting the event.

All attendees introduced themselves.

3. REVIEW OF MINUTES & ACTIONS OF LAST MEETING

No errors in content or accuracy were reported in the minutes of the 2013-1 meeting, so the minutes were accepted as an accurate record of the meeting.

The following Actions were outstanding from previous meetings and were considered during the course of the meeting:

Action Summary Resp Status

2012-2 France have a new Standards group to J-C H Overtaken 5.1 address this. He was requested to provide by events contact information:

2013-1 Attendees to make available ‘in-house’ All Complete documents associated with Testability.

2013-2 Comments and suggestions on Def Stan All Complete 00-42 be provided ASAP.

2013-3 Clarify what was happening with IEEE 1505 CG Complete at SCC20 Steering meeting

4. DE&S (TLS) CURRENT ACTIVITIES

4.1 DE&S GOCO Status

With the aid of a Presentation, MB provided a brief overview of the current status of the process to transform DE&S into a Government Owned, Contractor Operated (GOCO) organisation (see ‘20131121-CATS4D_Nov13-u.ppt’, included with these Minutes).

He said that the latest situation was that one bidder had dropped out, and it was currently being decided whether to continue the commercial process with only one bidder remaining.

In response to questions MB said: • The change in the Materiel Strategy would have no effect on Industry at present. The responsibility for Policy had moved to Log NEC and so will continue to be operated by MoD, but people like himself would probably move to work for the successful bidder. • A new Director to replace Director Joint Support Chain will be recruited. • On 9th December MB’s Email address, title etc will change. 5. DEFENCE STANDARDS - UPDATES

5.1 Def Stan 00-52 The General Requirements for Product Acceptance and Maintenance Test Specifications and Test Schedules.

With the aid of a Presentation (see ‘Def Stan 00-52.ppt’, included with these Minutes), AH provided an overview of the proposed updates to this standard. These proposed updates had been circulated with the Agenda.

MB requested that any comments on the updates be provided within the next two weeks. Action: All 2013-2 – 5.1.1 5.2 Def Stan 00-42 Pt 4 – Testability – Draft complete; (See attached)

Work on this Standard had been carried out by KE, but as he was unable to attend the Meeting, MB provided an overview of the proposed updates to this standard (see ‘Def Stan 00-42 Pt 4.pptx’, included with these Minutes). He stated that the standard went to CoDERM the previous Monday (18 th November) and requested that any comments on the updates be provided by 16 th December 2013. Action: All 2013-2 – 5.2.1 Post Meeting Note: A copy of the updated document was distributed immediately after the Meeting to allow CATS4D members to comment.

MB noted that generally feedback from the previous meeting in support of the two Actions placed on all parties regarding this standard had been good, although he had been unable to obtain a copy of the in-house Airbus Testability document.

5.3 Def Stan 00-70 – Standard Serviceability Testing

With the aid of a Presentation (see ‘20131121-CATS4D_Nov13_ Defstan00-70- u.ppt’, included with these Minutes), MB provided an overview of the proposed updates to this standard.

He requested that any comments on the updates be provided within the next two weeks. Action: All 2013-2 – 5.3.1 Post Meeting Note: A copy of the updated document was distributed immediately after the Meeting to allow CATS4D members to comment.

A number of questions were raised: • Is IEEE 1641 preferred in the standard? • Yes. In much the same way that ATLAS was. • What is the starting point for IEE 1641? • There are now a number of industry implementations: • Test Bricks from Indra. • newWaveX-SD from Cassidian Test Engineering Services. • ATML Pad from Reston software for 1641 in ATML Test Description • SigBase from EADS-NA for 1641 in ATML Test Description • The OSA-RTS from MB and utilising tools from multiple vendors including National Instruments, Teradyne and Cassidian Test Engineering Services. • What software needs to be bought to implement the OSA-RTS? • CCG listed the items utilised: • National Instruments ATML Importer. • National Instruments Test Stand. • National Instruments LabWindows / CVI. • Teradyne Xpress Services • Cassidian Test Engineering Services newWaveX-SD. • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET C#. • IM suggested that he and CCG should get together so that NI could develop a package for the OSA. • CCG re-iterated that the OSA-RTS was Open Source Software and users could customise it to suit their own requirements. This could include retargeting some of the tools if required. He emphasised that the community would benefit from changes made to the Open Source codebase that was provided as under the terms of the licence these changes were to be made available. 6. REPORT ON SCC20 2013-1 AND 2013-2 MEETINGS

CCG said that there had been two SCC meetings since the previous CATS4D meeting in May; 2013-1 in Montana and 2013-2 in Chicago. To aid context he displayed an organisation chart (see ‘September 2013 Organization for SCC20.pdf’, included with these Minutes) and gave a report on items discussed at the two meetings.

6.1 IEEE 1636.1 – Test Results and IEEE 1636.99 – SIMICA Common

These had recently been re-ballotted for release as 2013 versions. Changes included alignment of the standard to ATML, eg Test Description. These are now released and from now on will only be reviewed every ten years to provide stability.

6.2 IEEE 1671 – ATML Series of Standards

There is a schedule for the remaining standards in the ATML series: • IEEE 1671.5 (Test Adaptor) and IEEE 1671.6 (Test Station) are currently being reviewed. • IEEE 1671.1 (Test Description) and IEEE 1671.3 (UUT Description) are being significantly reorganised and should go to ballot around July 2014. 6.3 Spin-off Standards

6.3.1 Synthetic Instruments The Synthetic Instruments Working Group had been creating a new standard, to be called IEEE 1871.1, utilising material removed from Instrument Description. It was now ready and would be released at the same time as the update to Instrument Description.

6.3.2 Intrinsic Path Characteristics This standard, to be called IEEE 1871.2, will be an extension to ATML. It will: • Describe how path characteristics should be specified. • Describe how to calculate losses. A number of comments were made on this point: • With all the factors involved it seems impossible. • It still might be valuable. • It is still uncertain if the physics will support it.

6.3.3 Orchestration of ATML Services NASA has been developing this standard, to be called IEEE 1877, which will describe how to exchange ATML information. It was felt that it could be useful.

6.3.4 Modular Systems The Hardware Interface Group met at Chicago to discuss IEEE 1693; Modular Systems. MB attended the meeting and reported that there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding it and he didn’t think that it was needed. A number of questions were raised: • Is this an extension of IEEE 1505? If so, is it needed? • In some ways yes. IEEE 1505 had three dot standards: • 1505.1 – Test Head pin mapping. • 1505.2 – now discontinued, but was going to cover two-tier systems. • 1505.3 – Portable Bench Top Tester. Developed by the Marine Corps. The standard had elements owned by proprietary companies and was patent encumbered, so it is likely to die. If anyone was interested they could join the Working Group for IEEE 1693.

6.3.5 AI-ESTATE User Guide This went to ballot about one year ago, they had upward of 350 issues and are working through them.

6.3.6 Development of TSF Library Examples The IEEE has issued a PAR to extend the User Guide IEEE 1641.1 to look at TSF Best Practice with examples. When released, a set of downloadable TSFs will be made available. It was noted that these would be examples not mandatory standards. 6.3.7 Next SCC20 This has been proposed for 12 th May 2014, but has yet to be finalised. Two questions were raised: • Are SCC20 Meetings ever held in Europe? • Yes. More recently this has become less common, because of the difficulty of DoD personnel getting authorisation for foreign travel. • How many people typically attend? • Less than used to but typically three rooms are needed to house 12 people in each with one room large enough for 50. 7. IEEE 1641 USE CASE EXAMPLES/TEST REQUIREMENTS

7.1 Report from Indra

Indra had apologised for being unable to attend this meeting, but intended to further demonstrate their Test Bricks toolset at the next meeting.

7.2 TSF Library Best Practice and Examples

This is going forward (see 6.3.6).

7.3 Bus Testing

As a result of the discussion at the previous two Meetings, CCG had received two comments which were diametrically opposite: • More practical tests are needed covering interconnects, connectors, etc perhaps utilising reflectometry etc. • It was agreed that these issues are not confined to bus testing and are best covered separately. • More support for real-time control, protocols and non-message elements was needed. • There was considerable discussion about this: It was agreed that the original goal had been to include protocol testing, although there were some reservations on how possible this would prove to be.

J-CH said that the problem was with the wording of the test strategy. It was necessary to first define the layer to be tested and then describe the tests needed to prove that layer was working. AP commented that this was part of the problem, because there have always been variants of Bus Standards implemented by different organisations, eg 1553. This had made testing of these buses implementation specific.

J-CH said that he would like it to be possible, even with a real-time system, to describe both the protocol and the physical signal. CCG said that what was needed was a way to separate the physical layer from the others. As an example, he cited the use of a video signal to measure dithering.

GW said that they use this approach at Astrium and they also reinvent standards to be suitable for space technologies.

J-CH commented that things have changed. There used to be a card /driver /TPS approach, but this was no longer sufficient. What was needed was a database system that can be abstracted in real-time. IM suggested that the telecoms and semi-conductor industries might have some information about best practice. He would speak to them. Action: IM 2013-2 - 7.3.1 CCG said that regardless of the domain, the approach needed to be the same. There was considerable discussion regarding the approaches taken by various industries, eg telecoms, mobile, VESA etc. It was noted that in the telecoms industry, standards had to be adhered to otherwise there would be no interoperability whereas in closed systems this was not a problem and there were not the same pressures to adhere to the standard. These deviations make it harder to implement testing.

There was then further discussion about the concept of the layer model and it was noted that it wouldn’t necessarily work. For any scenario it would be necessary to stress the model until it breaks in order to identify the limit. To make it work, a generic methodology must be described, which could be mapped on to each system.

GW said that for 1553, Astrium had mapped the asynchronous bus onto a synchronous layer to achieve something that worked.

It was agreed that use cases were needed. All parties were requested to identify these. It was suggested that these could take the form of presentations. Action: All 2013-2 - 7.3.2 It was agreed that an extraordinary meeting should be convened in February 2014 to discuss this further. Examples were needed ahead of the meeting. Action: All 2013-2 - 7.3.3 7.4 Future testing requirements

7.4.1 DSG Developments PC provided a brief presentation on the implementation of the OSA-RTS currently being developed at DSG (see ‘DSG-OSA-RTS-so-far.ppt’ included with these Minutes). A number of questions were raised: • What is the scope of the work? • Three Test Programs have been authorised; all for Relay Cards. These are relatively simple but they cover most of the areas required going forward because many of the relays are activated using the digital resource. • Were there any procurement issues for the tools etc? • Some, but these have been overcome. • What problems have been encountered? • The main issue has been that the existing abstraction for the ATE is not good. • What is the best practice? • If a good abstraction for the ATE exists, then the problem is simple. If not, then the drivers have to be revalidated. CCG mentioned that DSG’s implementation benefited from the use of DTIF to enable large digital sequences to be easily ported between platforms. AP commented that DTIF was somewhat unique, in that it was a proprietary standard in the public domain.

7.4.2 Topics for Future Meetings MB said that for the next meeting he expected that: • DSG would be able to provide an update to their activities. • Indra would provide an update to their Test Bricks approach. 8. ATML STANDARDS AND R&M

CCG provided an overview of a presentation recently given to MoD R&M practitioners at Abbey Wood. Key points in the discussion were that the techniques currently used to collect information from the field generated useful information which was largely discarded. One of the biggest problems is that MoD does not deal with ‘big data’. In addition, although the current DRACAS requirements include fields for Serial Numbers, these records tend to be limited to the field arisings and do not include downstream PEC replacements, so fielded equipment ends up with incomplete records.

The ATML series of standards and the associated IEEE 1636.1 standard (Test Results) provided very large data sets in a format that could be reused to great benefit and so Project Teams should ensure that these standards are included in any procurements.

He used a cut-down version of the original presentation to illustrate his talk (see ‘ATML Standards and integration with maintainability - Minimal(v2).pptx’ included with these Minutes).

9. ANY OTHER BUSINESS

9.1 BS 66

AB said that he is a member of the British Standards Technical Committee for Test Equipment Safety. This Committee is largely responsible for the maintenance of BS EN 61010 and related standards. He asked if CATS4D members would be willing to comment on amendments to this and other TE Safety standards, as they were raised. This was agreed. 10. DATE OF NEXT MEETING

10.1 Next CATS4D Meeting

The next meeting will be held after SCC20, probably at the end of May or early June in 2014 (date and venue to be advised).

10.2 Extra-ordinary Digital Busses Working Group Meeting

The Digital Busses Working Group Meeting, will be held at the end of January or early February in 2014 (date and venue to be advised).

Post Meeting Note: This meeting has now been set for 4 th February 2014 at MBDA Stevenage.

The Chairman closed the meeting at 2:50 pm.

Graham Ward and Malcolm J Brown then kindly gave a very interesting guided tour of the Astrium test facilities and assembly area.

Terry Coles Malcolm Brown (Secretary) (Chair) Circulation List

Adrian Carter MBDA (UK) Alain Vervin Teradyne Alan Guare Selex ES Alex Barrett MBDA (UK) Anand Jain National Instruments Andrew Parkinson Teradyne Andy Mugford BAE SYSTEMS Ashley Hulme Cassidian Test Engineering Services Bartolome Lozano Ceron Airbus Military Bill Tully MBDA (UK) Chris Gorringe Cassidian Test Engineering Services Chris Hailes Rolls-Royce Aero Engines Controls Chris Roebuck SSBV Colin Sycamore Intepro Systems Darren Nicholls Rohde & Schwarz (UK) David Conway Teradyne Fernando Manrique Indra Graeme Philpott Selex ES Graham Strachan DE&S - AVR5 Graham Ward EADS Astrium Hans Hopf Sekas Howard Saward Cassidian Test & Services Ian Collins Aeroflex Ian Matthews National Instruments Ian Tonge Serco Technical and Assurance Services James Gibson Rohde & Schwarz (UK) Jean-Cristophe Hertzog MBDA Group (French National) Jochen Wolle Rohde & Schwarz (GmbH) José Manuel Gonzalez Pascual Indra Keith Ellis AKE Consultants Keith Randall Rohde & Schwarz (UK) Keith Surrell Aeroflex Test Solutions Lee Pater Astrium Malcolm Brown DE&S – Head of ATS Malcolm J Brown Astrium Marvin Rozner Aeroflex (US) Mike Davis SSBV Paul Attwell CIMTEK Paul Fowler Raytheon Penri Jones Cassidian Test Engineering Services Pete Cassidy DSG Peter Corbett Astrium Peter Lawson GAMBICA Ralph Green Astrium Richard Baldwin Terotest Richard Padley GE Aviation Robert McAndrew SELEX ES Roger Lowther Astrium Roland Andrews DiagnoSYS Simon Tanner Intepro Systems Stephen Roe Cassidian Test Engineering Services Steve Brenner Terotest Steve Kelly DSG Steve Wallace DSG Terry Coles Cassidian Test Engineering Services Terry Roblett MBDA (UK) Tom Philips SELEX-ES William Sinclair SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems