This paper presents a case study of AMEP, a prototype ESM signal processor which has been implemented in Smalltalk using an actor-based design methodology, Arguments for choosing an OOPS for implementing such applications are reviewed. AMEP is a large system which includes both hard real-time and knowledge-based subsystems. Extensive software metrics are presented for each subsystem and used to compare the characteristics of code designed for different purposes. For example, analysis of this data suggests that knowledge-based applications may be more difficult to port to an object-based language such as Ada than hard real-time systems. Team programming, productivity, documentation standards and other software engineering issues are also addressed.

This paper describes the application of object-oriented programming to the design of a multiprocessor ESM testbed. The ESM testbed uses an object-oriented development environment which integrates Smalltalk and C language tools with the Harmony real-time operating system in a shared memory multiprocessor. All development for an application is done using personal computers which are themselves processors in the real-time testbed. We first discuss two aspects of the ESM testbed: a framework for investigating ESM signal processing algorithms based on an object-oriented emitter database and blackboard objects which implement probabilistic reasoning; and an object-oriented ESM simulation environment which illustrates the use of object-oriented techniques for the development of complex real-time systems. In the second part of the paper we describe our software engineering approach and tools. Throughout the paper, the role played by object-oriented programming in the design of hybrid multiprocessors is highlighted.