Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2019 - 6

Feature Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2019.2900903

The Adaptive Avionics Platform
Bjoern Annighoefer, Marc Riedlinger, Oliver Marquardt, Reza Ahmadi,
Bernd Schulz, Matthias Brunner, Reinhard Reichel, University of Stuttgart
Institute of Aircraft Systems, Stuttgart, Germany

INTRODUCTION

Nomenclature

Modern avionics architectures of larger civil or military
aircraft follow the IMA concept in which computers and
operating systems are standardized. Resources such as
processors, memory, and bandwidth are shared between
aircraft system functions, e.g., landing gear and cabin
pressure control. Since the introduction of IMA, system
functions have mainly been software and are more or less
independent from the hardware, while the avionics hardware has become part of a shared avionics platform [1].
The binding of applications and system peripherals to the
IMA system happens by the action of configuration, and
millions of hardware and software parameters configure
every IMA device to fulfil its purpose. The introduction of
IMA has reduced the development cost, installation space,
the number of hardware modules, and the maintenance
cost [2], [3]. However, IMA has introduced configuration
and integration challenges [4]. IMA systems are almost
static, such that the configuration effort occurs only once,
but the effort for the initial configuration is a significant
percentile of the whole development effort.
Cabin avionics change much more rapidly due to frequent updates. Moreover, there are different cabin layouts
for different airlines and operation scenarios, such that
a single static configuration is not feasible. Like IMA, modern cabin platforms are composed of shared computing
platforms and configuration parameters. Cabin systems are
less safety-critical than IMA, but are critical for passenger
comfort and dispatchability. Moreover, cabin systems
suffer from the burden of many configuration variants [5].
Configuration is the key feature to utilize the benefits
of standardized avionics systems, but also one of the largest challenges. We propose a concept for an almost
Authors' current addresses: University of Stuttgart,
Institute of Aircraft Systems, Stuttgart 70569, Germany.
E-mail: (bjoern.annighoefer@ils.uni-stuttgart.de).
Manuscript received September 30, 2018; revised
December 13, 2018. ready for publication January 23, 2019.
Review handled by Silvia ULLO and Peter Willett.
0885/8985/19/$26.00 2019 IEEE
6

Autonomic computing.

AAP

Adaptive Avionics Platform.

ACMS

Adaptive CMS.

APPMA

Application management.

C-APP

Computing-application.

CMS

Cabin management system.

CPM

Computing module.

CORG

Central organization (computer).

DDS

Data distribution service.

Identification.

IOM

Input and output module.

IMA

Integrated modular avionics.

MESMA

Message management.

P-APP

Peripheral application.

PLAMA

Platform management.

SIGMA

Signal management.

SWI

(Configurable) Switch.

configuration-free generic avionics platform, called the
Adaptive Avionics Platform. The AAP is built from selfdescribing avionics modules as depicted in Figure 1.
The modules are connected to arbitrary topologies, scaling
with the number of applications, peripherals, and required
safety. The operation of an AAP instance is strictly
divided into the organization phase for self-configuration
and the standard phase for normal operation (NOP). During organization, the configuration and the application distribution are derived fully automatically. During the
standard phase, the system behaves like a statically configured avionics system, e.g., an IMA system. This paper
summarizes the current stage of the AAP concept and its
implementation as an Adaptive Cabin Management
System (ACMS) at the Institute of Aircraft Systems, University of Stuttgart, Germany. The AAP was developed
mainly by R. Ahmadi, M. Riedlinger, and O. Marquardt

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MARCH 2019

Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2019

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