Use of requirements engineering within the Thirty Meter Telescope project

Abstract

The Thirty Meter Telescope is comprised of thirty five individual sub-systems which include optical systems, instruments, adaptive optics systems, controls, mechanical systems, supporting software and hardware and the infrastructure required to support their operation. These thirty five sub-systems must operate together as a system to enable the telescope to meet the science cases for which it is being developed. These science cases are formalized and expressed as science requirements by the project's Science Advisory Committee. From these, a top down requirements engineering approach is used within the project to derive consistent operational, architectural and ultimately detailed design requirements for the sub-systems. The various layers of requirements are stored within a DOORS requirements database that also records the links between requirements, requirement rationale and requirement history. This paper describes the development of the design requirements from science cases, the reasons for recording the links between requirements and the benefits that documenting this traceability will yield during the design and verification of the telescope. Examples are given of particular science cases, the resulting operational and engineering requirements on the telescope system and how individual sub-systems will contribute to these being met.

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