System of Systems Control Interactions

Control Theory tools and processes for analyzing the interactions of complex System of Systems (SoS) are lacking, specifically when sub-systems are independently designed and/or higher levels of SoS controls are applied. Integrating these sub-systems into the SoS, can result in dynamic interactions between these sub-systems and the SoS controls resulting in unexpectedly large deviations between expected and real performance that can be unacceptable or unstable resulting in significant costs or time to fix. Further complicating the problem is the possibility that one configuration of the SoS may perform as expected while another configuration may perform unacceptably. During Phase I we will demonstrate the feasibility of applying Control Theory to a complex SoS by first identifying and describing the fundamentals of the interaction between sub-system, control loops and the high-level command and control (C2) decision-making framework. We will apply these fundamentals to develop a new set of analyses and design tools that quantify these effects across SoS integration reducing the time and effort required for sub-system integration into new and existing system of systems frameworks. The resulting tools will be applicable to virtually any SoS engineering problem. Approved for Public Release 16-MDA-8620 (1 April 16)