Run-Time Monitors Design for Adaptive Radar Systems: A Practical Framework

TL;DR

This paper presents a practical framework for implementing run-time verification in adaptive radar systems to enhance reliability, facilitate certification, and enable system insights during operation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework for applying run-time verification to adaptive radar systems, addressing verification challenges and supporting system improvements.

Findings

Framework successfully maps verification aspects for adaptive radar components

Example verifier demonstrates practical application of the framework

Run-time verification enhances system reliability and data insights

Abstract

Adaptivity in multi-function radar systems is rapidly increasing, especially when moving towards fully adaptive, cognitive radar systems. However, the large number of available system configurations makes the rigorous verification and certification process during the testing phase, deployment, and after hardware and software upgrades, challenging, if not infeasible. To alleviate the verification process, run-time verification can be applied to oversee the correct function of a system during its operation as done in applications where on-the-fly reconfiguration/adaptation is pervasive, e.g., spacecrafts and self-driving cars. Though possible, the application of run-time verification into a radar system is not straightforward, e.g., when verifying (adaptive) radar resource managers or performance measures, such as track initiation time in dynamic environments. The goal of this paper is to introduce a framework to identify, characterize, and map the various aspects necessary for implementing run-time verification for (components of) multi-function radar systems. The proposed framework can be used by radar practitioners and researchers for applying run-time-verification to adaptive, re-configurable radar systems. In addition, we discuss how run-time verification can be leveraged to gather new insights from operational data to improve functionalities in upcoming update cycles and present an example of a verifier designed using the introduced framework.