Deploying Safety-Critical Applications on Complex Avionics Hardware Architectures

Abstract

<p class="MsoNormal"> <span lang="EN-US">Aviation electronics (avionics) are sophisticated and distributed systems aboard an airplane. The complexity of these systems is constantly growing as an increasing amount of functionalities is realized in software. Thanks to the perform</span><span lang="EN-US">ance increase, a hardware unit must no longer be dedicated to a single system function. Multicore processors for exam</span><span lang="EN-US">ple facilitate this trend as they are offering an increased system performance in a small power envelope. In avionics, several system functions could now be integrated on a single hardware unit, if all safety requirements are still satisfied. This approach allows for further optimizations of the system architecture and substantial reductions of the space, weight and power (SWaP) footprint, and thus increases the transportation capacity. However, the complexity found in current safety-critical systems requires an automated software deployment process in order to tap this potential for further SWaP reductions. This article used a realistic flight control system as an example to present a new model-based meth</span><span lang="EN-US">odology to automate the software deployment process. This methodology is based on the correctness-by-construction principle and is implemented as part of a systems engineering toolset. Furthermore, metrics and optimization criteria are presented which further help in the automatic assessment and refinement of a generated deployment. A discussion re</span><span lang="EN-US">garding a tighter integration of this approach in the entire avionics systems engineering workflow concludes this article.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span> </p

E/E Architecture Synthesis: Challenges and Technologies

“…Using multi-core processors allows multiple functions in one hardware while meeting all safety requirements, which results in performance improvement of the system which can be a significant breakthrough in the aviation industry. A model-based approach was introduced in [82], namely Assist, to solve and optimize mapping problems (i.e., deployment of a safety-critical application on the avionics hardware) for distributed systems in the aviation domain. It uses the DSE mechanism to find optimal mapping solutions while considering optimizations objectives, including resource usage, weight, and cost.…”

A Platform to Configure and Monitor Safety-Critical Applications for Automotive Central Computers

“…An approach has been introduced [11] to solve and op timize mapping issues (i.e., deployment of a safety-critical application on avionics hardware) for distributed systems in the aviation domain. To facilitate the software integration process for multi-core and many-core embedded systems, an open-source tool, called AAP4MC, was proposed [12].…”

Optimization of systems with nested design space

“…The design of a flight management system (FMS) for an airplane is used as an example to demonstrate the intended workflow. It is based on the examples presented in [31], [32]. An FMS supports the pilot by automating a variety of critical in-flight tasks (such as trajectory prediction) and providing accurate information relevant for navigation and flight planning.…”