A demonstrator for the verification of the selective integration of the Flexible Platform approach into Integrated Modular Avionics

This article introduces a demonstrator built to prove the operability of the selective integration of the Flexible Platform approach into Distributed Integrated Modular Avionics (DIMA) architectures. Safety-critical system functions rely on a complex system management, which covers fault detection, redundancy management, and isolation of platform modules. Commonly, the system management causes the majority of the development and certification efforts. However, the IMA approach standardizes only the management of the resources and time of each hosted system function on the underlying hardware. Additionally, relevant system management functions - such as redundancy management for the safety-critical applications - is developed and implemented individually in the system function itself. The Flexible Platform, developed by the Institute of Aircraft Systems (ILS) at the University of Stuttgart, provides system management mechanisms as a generic software. The approach, presented in this paper, intends to use the Flexible Platform on IMA selectively for safety-critical system functions besides state-of-the-art ARINC653 applications. For the verification of this new approach, a lab demonstrator with industrial IMA modules is established to run predefined demonstration scenarios that validate the key-characteristics of the selectively used Flexible Platform on DIMA architecture.