Detailed Design of Avionics Control Software
Ulf Nilsson, Siewert Streiffert, and Anders Törne
Dept. of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden
ABSTRACT
Avionics control systems are typical real-time systems - automatic control
algorithms are realized as periodic computations where strict requirements on
the timing can be derived by a control analysis. The requirements are
effectively end-to-end timing requirements on the computation - from sensory
input to actuator output - and have to be transformed into a detailed control
software design. This analysis, together with a resource and performance
analysis, is required early in the development process - neither hardware
nor prototypes of the software can be assumed to exist - in order to
estimate the cost of development and the cost of hardware to meet customer
requirements. The paper investigates the applicability of a method (the period
calibration method) to transform the end-to-end requirements of an avionics
control software, into a design consisting of a set of periodic tasks with
buffered data flows. The experience is discussed and shortcomings of the
method are analysed.
Download the paper
(56629 bytes).
Anders Törne
<andto@ida.liu.se>