Linux-based memory efficient ARINC 653 partition scheduler

Development of the space industry has led to a diversity of specialized electronics-units implemented on space system. However, this provoked new problems such as increased system´s complexity and the size. As a solution to the problem, the Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architecture and ARINC 653 standard have been suggested. This paper introduces a Linux-based memory efficient ARINC 653 partition scheduler, which employs fixed-priority preemptive scheduling algorithm for partitions scheduling. The implemented partition scheduler has small memory footprint for each partition and produces low partition switching overhead. The prototype was executed on a LEON4 processor, which is the European Space Agency (ESA) Next Generation Multicore Processor (NGMP) in the space sector. In evaluation, we analyzed execution trace, memory footprint and scheduling overhead.