MASIW. Software tools for development of Integrated Modular Avionics
MASIW – Modular Avionics System Integrator Workplace
The Modular Avionics System Integrator Workplace framework is intended to automate the design of real-time aviation electronics systems based on Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architecture.
System designers and integrators of IMA systems are responsible for the following tasks:
- clarification and reconciliation of the software and hardware requirements with developers;
- design of the IMA platform based on the requirements for software, including:
- distribution of software applications among available core processing modules (CPM), in compliance with required CPU cycles count, scheduling requirements for periodic applications, RAM/ROM memory usage, the bandwidth of network interfaces, etc.;
- design of network topology based on requirements of reliability, consistency of interfaces, message delivery latency, etc;
- verification of the IMA system model being developed for compliance with requirements defined in the project documentation of an aircraft and its individual components;
- generation of configuration data for components of the IMA system.
- creation and editing of models using the text and diagram editors;
- support for team research that would enable tracking and modifying individual elements of a model;
- support for the reuse of third-party AADL models.
- analysis of the hardware/software system structure: sufficiency of hardware resources, interfaces consistency, etc.;
- analysis of data transmission characteristics of AFDX networks: message latencies, fullness of queues of the ports, etc.;
- generation and analysis of fault trees (FTA) to determine probabilities of highlevel fault events;
- architecture-model based analysis of failures and their consequences, including generation of special descriptive tables;
- simulation of hardware/software system model with generation of user reports including software-in-the-loop execution of on-board partitions with RTOS coemulated with QEMU.
- distribution of software applications by computational modules, taking into account limited hardware platform resources and additional restrictions on reliability and security of the hardware/software system.
- generation of schedules for processors (in particular, for ARINC-653 compatible real-time operating systems);
- development of specialized configuration data tools, based on the provided software interface (API);
- generation of configuration data for RTOS VxWorks653 and AFDX network equipment.
To solve these problems, a system integrator of IMA systems needs a precise understanding of all the details of the system being developed , both at high and low levels of granularity, as well as utmost attentiveness when tracking the consequences of changes in the IMA system architecture. At the same time, the size of modern on-board aircraft systems and the number of essential details is so large that it is impossible to keep everything in a single person's mind.
In order to automate the process of IMA systems design and integration the MASIW Framework has been developed. The MASIW Framework is used mainly at design stages during development of IMA systems.
The current deployment of the MASIW Framework allows system integrator to perform the following tasks:
1. Creation, editing and management of models based on AADL modeling language:
2. Analysis of models:
3. Synthesis of models:
4. Generation of configuration data:
Creation, editing and management of models and configuration data are implemented using widely accepted extensions of the Eclipse environment, such as Eclipse Modeling Framework, Graphical Editing Framework, Eclipse Team Providing, SVN Team Provider, GIT Team Provider. The MASIW Framework is modular and extendable. Third-party developers can extend the functionality of the toolset by creating their own modules to customize it.
The MASIW framework is being developed by ISPRAS jointly with GosNIIAS.