21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-1.9.2

ALLOCATION OF FAULT HANDLING TECHNIQUES IN MULTIPROCESSING AVIONICS ARCHITECTURES

Marchetto A.
Alenia Aeronautica, Italy

Keywords: fault handling techniques, multiprocessing avionics architectures

Future avionics architectures will be characterized by the implementation of distributed processing at ever increasing levels. A modular approach to design offers the suitable physical structure to accommodate this trend, and, at the same time, promises great improvements of operational and mission performances. In particular, an high tolerance to faults is expected, as most avionics functions become software functions in the computing core, competing for modular reconfigurable shared resources to accomplish their tasks. This paper origins from research activities carried out by Alenia, at both European and National level, in the area of integrated modular avionics architectures, and develops the following subjects: - Differentiation and definition of general fault preventing methods for avionics system: fault avoidance, fault removal, fault tolerance. - Definition of thee mix of techniques which will cooperate in providing the required degree of fault tolerance. - Identification of the categories of fault which have to be addressed at distributed operating system level, and characterization of the services which have to be provided in support of the above mix of fault tolerance techniques. Finally, the paper outlines the physical architecture of a general modular multiprocessing core and shows how the application of proper mixes of fault tolerance techniques allows recovering of different kinds of faults.

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