Open systems standards frameworks: A history and use of the Space Generic Open Avionics Architecture

This paper is a look at the history and use of one example of a standards reference model. A standards reference model attempts to establish a systems structure for developing standards to address the needs of a specific system domain. The Space Generic Open Avionics Architecture was a standards reference model that was developed to target the domain of crewed space flight avionics systems. The original idea behind the SGOAA was to identify more precisely the interfaces between avionics domain functionality which seemed to be architecturally and technologically independent and thus to allow users of the model the ability to structure standards for avionics systems. The ideas behind standards reference models were being developed in standards organizations like POSIX 1003.0 and ISO in the late 80's and early 90's. The SGOAA was an extension of this early work. In the mid 90's the SGOAA was taken to the Society of Automotive Engineer's (SAE) as a proposal for their use in standards development in the avionics area. Since that time SAE has modified the framework for their use and extended it into several areas. Following introduction into SAE, it was picked up for more extensive use within the Department of Defense technical Reference Model. These uses within avionics and command and control systems show the utility of this approach to system architecture for open systems.