Fractionated space systems: Decoupling conflicting requirements and isolating requirement change propagation

The fractionated space systems vision can potentially provide various levels of flexibility and adaptability that make a space system capable of overcoming a number of uncertain scenarios during its development and operational lifetime. Significant research is being performed on the benefits and drawbacks of such systems under operational scenarios, but their capabilities during development phase remain rather unknown. This paper evaluates how fractionated space systems can respond to requirements change during their development with higher level of adaptability and, specifically, how fractionation can facilitate the detection and resolution of conflicting requirements. We will also study how fractionation helps in isolating the effects of change propagation in requirements during system development. We suggest two frameworks for those purposes, which in addition provide analytical capabilities to evaluate the difficulty induced by a set of requirements that need to be fulfilled simultaneously and trade it against a variety of architectural design choices.