Aspects on “Architecture for Independent Distributed Avionics” (AIDA)

Sponsored by the European Community under the 6th framework program (FP6), the "Distributed equipment Independent environment for Advanced avioNic Applications", also known by its acronym, DIANA, is a consortium working to enhance existing IMA platforms and development means. The existing industry open standards for integrated modular avionics (IMA) such as ARINC 653 do not cover all aspects to promote factual host application modularity. And also, it does not provide a friendly system level avionic integration support. The "architecture for independent distributed avionics" (AIDA) middleware, under definition by the DIANA consortium aims to improve current ARINC 653 middleware by providing new services to: (i) increase interoperability between applications; (ii) support Safety Critical Java applications; (iii) reduce the impact of software changes; (iv) provide better support at system level, enhancing the integration between services on different processing modules and non AIDA systems; and finally, (v) improve aircraft dispatchability with less processing modules, an important system reconfigurability feature proposed by AIDA.