On Software Reference Architectures and Their Application to the Space Domain

In high-integrity systems a rising portion of software assets and development activities address quality and conformance issues in several non-functional dimensions. For those systems the software architecture acquires a prominent role: it does in fact express the framework that hosts the required functionalities, while the principles and guarantees that underpin its definition assure the desired non-functional quality on the software product. A software reference architecture holds for a set of systems and prescribes the form that concrete software architectures have to have for those systems. The software reference architecture can thus be seen as a generic software architecture, whose assets are recognized by domain stakeholders as befitting the construction of a given class of systems, for which they have been proven to meet the applicable industrial needs and technical requirements. This paper discusses the rationale for the understanding and definition of a software reference architecture and present its use in an initiative promoted by the European Space Agency for its future satellite systems.