Verification is a critical process in the development of engineered systems. Through verification, engineers gain confidence in the correct functionality of the system before it is deployed into operation. Traditionally, verification strategies are fixed at the beginning of the system's development and verification activities are executed as the development progresses. Such an approach appears to give inferior results as the selection of the verification activities does not leverage information gained through the system's development process. In contrast, a set-based design approach to verification, where verification activities are dynamically selected as the system's development progresses, has been shown to provide superior results. However, its application under realistic engineering scenarios remains unproven due to the large size of the verification tradespace. In this work, we propose a parallel tempering approach (PTA) to efficiently explore the verification tradespace. First, we formulate exploration of the verification tradespace as a tree search problem. Second, we design a parallel tempering (PT) algorithm by simulating several replicas of the verification process at different temperatures to obtain a near-optimal result. Third, We apply the PT algorithm to all possible verification states to dynamically identify near-optimal results. The effectiveness of the proposed PTA is evaluated on a partial model of a notional satellite optical instrument.
翻译:核查是设计系统开发过程中的一个关键过程。通过核查,工程师对系统在投入运行之前的正确功能有了信心。传统上,核查战略在系统开发之初就固定下来,核查活动随着发展的进展而执行。这种方法似乎效果较差,因为选择核查活动并不利用通过系统开发过程获得的信息。相比之下,一套基于标准的核查设计方法,核查活动被动态地选择为系统的发展进展,显示它提供了优异的结果。然而,由于核查贸易空间的庞大,在现实的工程假设下,核查战略的应用仍然没有被证明。我们在此工作中提议一种平行的调节方法,以便有效地探索核查贸易空间。首先,我们把核查贸易空间的探索作为一种树类搜索问题。第二,我们设计一种平行的调节算法,在不同的温度上模拟核查进程的若干复制品,以获得近于最佳的结果。第三,我们对所有可能的核查国都采用通用的计算机算法,以便动态地确定近最佳的卫星光学工具。评估了拟议的模拟工具的有效性。