Distributed, equipment Independent environment for Advanced avioNic Applications (DIANA)
The DIANA Project is the first step for the implementation of an enhanced avionics platform, named AIDA (Architecture for Independent Distributed Avionics), providing secure distribution and execution on virtual machines to avionics applications. Along with this objective, DIANA also aims at contributing to the definition and standardization of the development and certification means needed to support this novel platform.
The introduction of the DIANA concepts is expected to bring a significant development cost and time reduction when compared to the situation where each aircraft electronic program has to develop a set of specific hardware and software. The usage of very promising technologies, such as CORBA and JAVA implementations in real time environment, and the update of standards will provide new opportunities to create the future IME architectures for the next generation of aircraft.
EU Specific Targeted Research Projects (FP06-2005-Aero-1)
Period:
2006 - 2010
Partners:
- GMV Aeronautics (Portugal)
- Thales Avionics SA (France)
- Alenia Aeronautica S.p.A. (Italy)
- Dassault Aviation (France)
- Stichting Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaartlaboratorium (The Netherlands)
- Società Italiana Avionica (Italy)
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary)
- Aonix SA (France)
- Karlsruhe Institue of Technology (KIT) (Germany)
- Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica S.A (Brazil)
The DIANA Project is the first step for the implementation of an enhanced Integrated Modular Electronics (IME) platform, providing secure distribution and execution on virtual machines to avionics applications. DIANA will define and standardize the development and certification means needed to support the new platform.
Project aim:
Definition and evaluation of an example IME platform, including:
- Object Oriented (OO) avionics applications running on virtual machines (like the Java Virtual Machine, JVM);
- Services supporting secure distribution (like CORBA) for avionics applications.
Definition of the development means, based on the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach;
Definition of the certification means;
Standardization of the results of the project.
Today, the development of avionics software accounts for 85% of the cost of the development of avionics. The application in IT systems of the techniques above (MDE, OO, CORBA, JVM) has achieved reductions of up to 80% of the costs of software development.
Introducing the use of these techniques in avionics software, DIANA will contribute to the reduction of the aircraft development costs and to the reduction of the aircraft operating costs, enabling a faster upgrade and replacement of the avionics applications and contribute to the reduction of on-board weight through a better use of computational resources.
Supported by major avionic manufacturers and well recognized air framers, the DIANA project will be run by a strong management team from a leading SME in the area of avionics.
Community Added Value will be obtained by pulling together expertise from different Companies and Universities across different countries, to perform the development of the platform. Improvement in European Technology Progress will be achieved by taking the combined community knowledge and experience to provide more advanced avionics solutions and increase the European scientific knowledge.
