Partitioning strategy based on safety in integrated modular avionics

Abstract

Integrated Modular Avionics, which has replaced traditional federal architecture, is now widely used in the aircraft. Robust partitioning is adopted by new architecture to cope with the failure propagation due to resource sharing. However, if the activity of allocating applications to partitions doesn't consider the common cause failure and coupling relations among avionic functions, it can intensify the failure propagation. At present, a lot of researches take into account the application software's functionality and criticality in the software configuration activities, but not include other factors which are also indispensable. In this paper, we proposed a partitioning method from the safety perspective. Firstly, we identified the process of allocating applications to partitions from the partitioning configuration activities referred to Do-297 and built the partitioned system model. Three safety factors which should be satisfied by the process were introduced. Then, we presented the safety constraints based on the safety factors. Finally, we proposed the partitioning strategy on the basic of safety constraints and partitioned system model. This partitioning strategy will be the theoretical basis for the scientific partitioning method in future and ensure the implementation of robust partitioning in Integrated Modular Avionics.