FACE® Open Architecture Standard Support (2009-2025)

The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE®) Standard is an Open Architecture approach to creating reusable, interoperable software for DoD Platforms (https://www.opengroup.org/face). The FACE Consortium was formed in 2010 to define an open avionics environment for all military airborne platform types. Vanderbilt has been an Academia team member supporting the FACE standard development effort since its inception in 2009 assisting in the formative concepts and continues to provide key technical guidance in many areas of the FACE Consortium. Three ISIS members are listed as Principal Authors of the FACE Technical Standard.

We currently support the FACE Community through funding from Army PEO Aviation and this work has been supported by NAVAIR PMA-209 in previous efforts.

The following are our major thrusts supporting the FACE Community:

Conformance Test Suite (CTS)

Vanderbilt is the developer of the Conformance Test Suite (CTS) tool. The CTS tool is the mandated conformance test and is used to validate all software component deliveries that are required to be conformant to the FACE standard. CTS has been officially adopted by the FACE Consortium and is publicly and freely available via the Open Group FACE website and supports FACE Technical Standard Editions 2.x and 3.x. See The Open Group's CTS download page here: https://www.opengroup.org/face/conformance-testsuites

Data Modeling
Vanderbilt provides modeling tool and automation support for data modeling methods (defining software component interfaces)

Provide guidance on data modeling methods (the FACE Data Model defines interface messages)
Develop tools for data modeling: modeling helper “plug-ins” (e.g. MagicDraw/Cameo, Enterprise Architect, others…)
Developed Transformation utilities for interoperability with commercial tools (e.g. ANSYS SCADE)

The tools we have created for the FACE Community are available here:
https://www.isis.vanderbilt.edu/FACE

FACE Consortium Support
Vanderbilt provides subject matter expertise to the inner workings of the FACE Consortium though our participation in various subcommittees.