A Streamlined Approach Toward Automated Generation and Validation of ARINC 653–Compliant Avionics Configurations

The development of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) has revolutionized the avionics industry by allowing multiple functions to be present on the same General Processing Module instead of only a single function per line-replaceable unit in federated avionics architectures. However, the diversity in IMA solutions limits the portability of applications, which eventually led to the development of IMA standards and guidelines. One such standard is ARINC 653, which outlines, among others, the necessary data for specifying any ARINC 653 configuration. To meet the requirements set by aforementioned standards, this paper proposes a Model-Driven Development approach for engineering ARINC 653–compliant avionics configurations. The authors present a setup for automated configuration, verification, and validation of such configurations. The approach involves the use of MATLAB, System Composer, and Simulink for modeling and configuring the system, as well as generating ARINC 653–compliant configurations in XML format. The paper further exemplifies the approach for modeling and automatically configuring ARINC 653–compliant systems and highlights the potential for system verification and validation at both the design and software implementation stages. The results show that model-driven engineering of ARINC 653–compliant avionics architectures is a viable way to automate the engineering process and increase the quality of the system.