Model-Driven Development of ARINC 653 Configuration Tables

Model-driven development (MDD) has become a key technique in systems and software engineering, including the aeronautic domain. It facilitates on systematic use of models from a very early phase of the design process and through various model transformation steps (semi-)automatically generates source code and documentation. However, on one hand, the use of model-driven approaches for the development of configuration data is not as widely used as for source code synthesis. On the other hand, we believe that, particular systems that make heavy use of configuration tables like the ARINC 653 standard can benefit from model-driven design by (i) automating error-prone configuration file editing and (ii) using model based validation for early error detection.

In this paper, we will present the results of the European project DIANA that investigated the use of MDD in the context of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) and the ARINC 653 standard. In the scope of the project, a tool chain was implemented that generates ARINC 653 configuration tables from high-level architecture models. The tool chain was integrated with different target systems (VxWorks 653, SIMA) and evaluated during case studies with real-world and real-sized avionics applications.