Design of an Automatic Specification-based Test-framework for On-board software of Satellites

Satellites are sophisticated and therefore complicated constructs that require interdisciplinary teamwork of various experts of different academic disciplines. The integration of specific payload components, like scientific experiments, in the on-board software of the satellite is very challenging. The domain expert, as the owner of the payload component, possesses detailed insights on his or her component, but lacks sufficient programming skills to implement it in the on-board software. The rogrammer is able to write proper code for the onboard software, but is inexperienced with the payload component of the domain expert. This report describes the design and the implementation of an automatic specification-based test-framework for on-board software of satellites to ridge the knowledge and communication gap between the programmer and the domain expert. Model- and test-driven development are in the focus of the testframework. With the help of a domain-specific language, the domain expert is able to model a specification in formal notation, representing potential use-case scenarios of the component. These scenarios are automatically translated to compilable C++ test cases, which help the programmer to verify the functional correctness of the on-board software implementation of the payload component while he or she is programming it