Killing gateways: Applying the RTSframework to improve avioncs systems performance

Data interoperability remains a challenge for operational requirements allowing real-time systems (RTS) to work together. Distributed real-time embedded (DRE) Systems are increasingly based on component middleware/ gateways for data exchange. A gateway is a link between two computer programs. It acts as a portal between two programs allowing them to share information and bypass certain protocols on a host computer. Although seemingly harmless, a gateway can have tremendous negative performance effects on systems. The data interoperability mechanism built-in in the RTSframework replaces the gateways while maintaining the system behavior and data integrity, and improving the overall system performance. To validate this research proposal, a target avionic system is adapted to the RTSframework, implementing the new approach of data interoperability, and enforcing the correct realization of functional requirements. The advantage of the RTSframework utilization is verified through comparisons of software quality, reliability and complexity before and after the real-time target avionic system adaptation. The comparisons were used to evaluate changes made on softwarepsilas logical model and code providing indications of software quality improvement. Quality indicates how well the software meets the requirements, so in this context, a good performance is identified as a type of change request in which the target-of-test failed to meet the requirements.