Integrated Modular Avionics for commercial applications

Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) systems have recently been taken up widely for real commercial applications and it soon became obvious that properly designed development approaches that meet its specific requirements were at best in short supply. Firstly, there are no solutions that enable the coverage, or support, of formal development processes. Secondly, currently available system-development tools focus mainly on the proper development of systems or software applications and fail to deal adequately with system integration issues. Moreover, proper interconnection between formal specification tools and simulation/code generating tools power a whole set of advantages that have been poorly explored in less conventional (and more recent) development methodologies.

With this problem in mind, GMV implemented SIMOVER, an R&D project that aimed to bridge this gap by developing a tool that would perform all the following functions:

• facilitate communication of critical systems within the development process;
• establish mechanisms for validating configurations produced with other tools, namely GMV’s in-house product ConfiguIMA; 
• enable execution of models within the development process for rapid detection of requirement conflicts and configuration errors; 
• incorporate specific certification elements into the validation process.

The project, ended in September 2013, has successfully developed this tool and met all its other aims. Within the project GMV has also generated an XML conversion algorithm and a methodology for both XML conversion and comparison that will enable GMV to develop a complete end-to-end IMA development process that is both model-driven and formally verifiable; crucially, it will also empower the whole IMA system certification process under RTCA DO-178C.

SIMOVER is part of the Lisbon Regional Operational Program (Programa Operacional Regional de Lisboa, shortened to POR Lisboa), which abides by the main recommendations of the National Strategic Reference Framework (Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional: QREN), set up for application of the Community policy of economic and social cohesion in Portugal for 2007-2013.