Building systems with predictable performance: A Joint Biometrics Architecture emulation

The US Army CERDEC supported the Army Chief Information Officer (CIO/G-6) on a joint effort to develop a reliable, robust, secure, survivable and optimized Joint Biometrics Architecture with predictable performance in support of the Warfighter. This paper describes the application of an emulation technique for integrated (OVs, SVs, TVs) architecture assessment, and highlights the emulation of a Joint Biometrics Architecture use case in the TeleniX Suite virtual emulation environment as a case study. This emulation used a synthetic Iris Biometrics Database created for testing technical threads and scenarios in the Joint Biometrics Architecture. The emulation focused on the Base Access thread operation as described in the Biometrics Operational Architecture [DoD-2007] with the following scenarios: Enroll a person with a biometrics sample, Allow base access, and Deny base access. Architecture emulation provides insight into performance parameters of real-time communications systems, such as response times for access decisions, bandwidth utilization and data synchronization among geographically distributed Biometrics Databases and users under realistic operational scenarios. The ability to predict such performance parameters at the systems of systems level enables greater understanding of trade offs and better design of the overall system.