Responsive Systems Comparison Method: Dynamic Insights into Designing a Satellite Radar System

Often shifts in context, such as changes in budgets, administrations, and warfighter needs, occur more frequently than high-cost space-based system development timelines. In order to ensure the successful development and operation of such systems, designers must balance between anticipating future needs and meeting current constraints and expectations. This paper describes the application of Multi-Epoch Analysis on a previously introduced satellite radar system program case study, quantitatively analyzing the impact of changing contexts and preferences on “best” system designs for the program. Each epoch characterizes a fixed set of context parameters, such as available technology, infrastructure, environment, and mission priorities. For each epoch, several thousand design alternatives are parametrically assessed in terms of their ability to meet imaging, tracking, and programmatic expectations using Multi-Attribute Tradespace Exploration. While insights on tradeoffs are discovered within a particular epoch, further dynamic insights become apparent when comparing tradespaces across multiple epochs. The Multi-Epoch Analysis reveals three key insights: 1) the ability to quantitatively investigate the impact of “requirements” across many systems and contexts, 2) the ability to quantitatively identify value “robust” systems, including both passively robust and changeable systems, and 3) the ability to quantitatively identify key system tradeoffs and compromises across stakeholders and missions.