Peer Reviewed Journal via three different mandatory reviewing processes, since 2006, and, from September 2020, a fourth mandatory peer-editing has been added.
Over time, technical systems such as automobiles or spacecraft
have grown more complex due to the incorporation of
increasingly more and different components. The integration of
these components, which are frequently designed and
constructed within separate departments and companies may
lead to malfunctioning systems as their interplay cannot be
tested within the earlier phases of development.
This paper introduces compatibility management as one
solution to the problems of late component integration.
Compatibility management is carried out on a common crossdomain
model of the system and therefore allows to test
compatibility early on.
We show how compatibility management can be embedded into
the phased development of ECSS-M-30A and present the
(Unified) Compatibility Modeling Language ((U)CML), which
is used for the underlying cross-domain model. A case study
demonstrates the application of (U)CML in the development of
a small satellite and explains different degrees of compatibility.
