Title: On the complexity of system designs

Authors: Darryn J. Reid

Addresses: Land Operations Division, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, P.O. Box 1500, Edinburgh, 5111, South Australia

Abstract: A |design archetype| is a characterisation of the possible designs that a given system design approach can generate. The central concern is the need for flexible and structurally scalable design approaches. The design archetype is a pattern for generating system designs of arbitrary scale; design approaches cannot not scale well that do not sufficiently limit the range of designs they can produce. The Kolmogorov and uniform complexities of the design archetype are used to quantify the scalability of its corresponding design methodology; system design approaches are classed according to the upper bounds on these measures as the system size increases.

Keywords: formal languages; Kolmogorov complexity; recursive function theory; system design; system engineering; Turing machine; uniform complexity; design archetype; flexible design; scalable design; absolute complexity measures; land forces; advanced military C4ISR systems; tactical land environments; structural complexity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDSS.2008.021971

International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems, 2008 Vol.1 No.2, pp.130 - 149

Published online: 11 Dec 2008 *

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