Design Patterns for Avionics Control Systems
Doug Lea · 1998
this document combine observations, reinterpretations, rational reconstructions, and redesigns of Avionics Control Systems within the realm of the DSSA ADAGE project[3]. An Avionics Control System (ACS) is the main navigation system of an aircraft. An ACS continuously collects sensor data to estimate actual state of an aircraft, computes desired aircraft state with respect to guidance modes, and performs actions that advise pilots and/or directly manipulate aircraft effectors in ways that bring actual and desired state in closer agreement. These patterns describe domain-specific architecture concerns and steps in the construction of an ACS using a minimal vocabulary (e.g., "components", "interfaces", "functions", "attributes"), and with minimal commitment to how these should be expressed within any particular design method, notation, engineering tool, or development process. However, because of the critical impact of Avionics Control Systems on human safety, it is essential to capture the resulting designs into appropriate formalisms and semi-formalisms that can be analyzed and reasoned about. Most patterns address only the architectural forms of components, interfaces, connections, and protocols, delving into details only when they impact overall design. These patterns may be used to generate instances of a family of concrete architectures and designs that may be implemented using a number of different languages, tools, and systems. Because of the diversity of platforms and programming languages used in avionics systems, implementation details are notably absent. This collection of patterns also omits sufficient description of signal processing and control algorithms, device characteristics of radar systems and other navigation hardware, pilot instrument and user inter...