Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine April 2018 - 24

Feature Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2017.180230

Application of Model-Based Systems Engineering in
Small Satellite Conceptual Design-A SysML Approach
Muhammad Waseem, Muhammad Usman Sadiq, Satellite Research and Development
Centre, SUPARCO, Lahore, Pakistan

INTRODUCTION

OBJECTIVES

The satellite design industry has successfully accepted systems
engineering (SE) since its inception, taking advantage of its methodologies and techniques to harness underlying complexities. In
traditional SE approach, it becomes difficult to assess the completeness and consistency of information spread across tools and
documents. In particular, it is difficult to perform traceability and
assess the change impacts of certain design parameters.
Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is an emerging
technology that is providing the new horizon in the SE domain.
MBSE produces a system model contained in a model repository,
which includes more formal, complete, and semantically rich system specifications and design for rigorous analysis, verification,
and validation since earlier phases of projects. MBSE provides a
consistent and automatically traceable system design, which enhances the quality of traceability and change impact assessment.
Object Management Group (OMG) Systems Modeling Language (SysML) has been standardized by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) as a graphical modeling
language for system engineers [16]. SysML is a domain-specific
modeling language used to specify, analyze, design, optimize,
and verify systems and system of systems [7], [14]. We have used
SysML to develop a scalable model repository for RS satellites. A
parametric model-based approach has been used that allows generic models of various mission scenarios to be characterized for
the study being performed. Such a parametric approach supports
fast modification and analysis of new scenarios, which is essential
for the real-time process. It acts as a means to establish and fix
the ground rules of the design and to formalize the responsibility
boundaries of each domain. Once a specific model is established, it
is used to refine the design and to introduce further levels of detail.

Authors' current address: M. Waseem, M. U. Sadiq, Satellite
Research and Development Center (SRDC), Pakistan Space
and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO),
Samsani Road, West Canal Bank, Lahore, Punjab 54000, Pakistan, E-mail: (vasim98@gmail.com).
Manuscript received October 26, 2016, revised February 2,
2017, May 23, 2017, and ready for publication June 29, 2017.
Review handled by R. Wang.
0885/8985/18/$26.00 © 2018 IEEE
24

This research was conducted to investigate the usefulness of the
MBSE approach to assist the existing systems engineering process
and practices for current and future space missions. The prime focuses of the work presented in this article are as follows:
C

To enhance understanding of SysML pertaining to satellite
modeling for our system engineers
To show how the SysML modeling language can be used to
complement the requirements engineering process, i.e., to
better define, trace, and validate requirements [9]
To establish parametric relationships [10] among various
design elements with parametric modeling using SysML internal block diagrams and parametric diagrams
Seamless interface of existing system-level design tools
(Satellite Tool Kit [STK], matrix laboratory [MATLAB]/
Simulink, and Microsoft Excel) with the SysML satellite
model to assist on-the-fly parameter tuning

To achieve these objectives, we selected an ongoing remote sensing (RS) student satellite (NSS-1) as a case study and developed
its SysML model repository. We used MagicDraw 18.1 from No
Magic Inc. [16] as the modeling tool and SysML 1.4 as the modeling language.

PREVIOUS WORK
To assist the systems engineering process for our ongoing satellite design projects, several automated applications and tools have
been devised by the systems engineering team. Development of
the system integrated design environment (SIDE) was one of such
efforts [10]. SIDE is a spreadsheet-based integration tool, which
connects various satellite system engineering design and analysis
tools in a local area network.
Significant work on use of SysML has been done by Spangelo et al. [1] for CubeSat. The article reports on using MBSE and
SysML to model a standard CubeSat modeling framework and applying that model to the Radio Aurora Explorer mission [6].
Sayanjali et al. [5] have used the MBSE approach using SysML
for RS satellite conceptual design. The remote sensing (RS) satellite captures images in visible and infrared spectra. Block definition
diagrams (BDDs) are created to specify physical architectures for

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