Integrated Modular Avionics for Missile Applications

Conventionally, the avionics architectures implemented in military/aviation industry are of federated nature. Federated Architectures are based on dedicated computational modules or processing units distributed across the vehicle. The major advantage of Federated architectures is their inherent fault containment, and the major disadvantage is massive use of resources which results in increase in power consumption, size, weight and cost. It is a great challenge for the designers to reduce the weight and power consumption for their new systems, with reduced development expenses and design cycle times. Making use of the advancements in the hardware and software technologies, the military/aviation industry is gradually moving towards the use of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA). The central idea of IMA is the sharing of resources, leading to multiple avionics functions in a single hardware. This paper discusses the approach followed, criticalities addressed, complexities involved in the development of integrated avionics for missile applications.