Life-cycle timing analysis of IMA systems

Integrated modular avionics (IMA) systems aim to provide highly flexible, reliable and integrated solutions for future aircraft systems. IMA moves away from “federated” systems, with inherent inflexibility, toward systems where applications are integrated and share resources in a flexible and efficient manner. Timing and resource analysis (TRA) provides worst-case analysis of system time and resource usage. TRA enables the behaviour of a system, in terms of time and resource usage, to be analysed off-line. This paper illustrates how TRA can be used throughout the life-cycle. This is key for IMA-the potential temporal and resource behaviour of the system can be estimated when requirements are known, but before code has been written. This can save costly software and hardware reworks late in the life-cycle when it is found that resources were underestimated