Flexible Communication Architecture for Dependable Time-Triggered Systems.

The trend for more flexible communication architectures, in particular for safety critical aeronautic applications, reflects the growing need for an optimized design approach. Customer requirements for additional functionality and changes caused by unpredictable obsolescence policies may necessitate requests for renewal of technologies during the product life cycle in a maintainable approach. The challenge is to develop an architecture approach, allowing reusability of existing application code, scalability and providing independence of the underlying system communication. Over recent years, shared networks have become a rapidly emerging technology in aeronautics and space, since they offer -- in contrast to point-to-point connections--more flexibility in terms of architecture and reduced wiring. Thus, they present the prospect of potential savings in cost and weight. In particular, due to their reliability and strongly deterministic behavior, time-triggered shared networks have evolved as eligible communication protocols for safety-critical applications in aerospace. We propose an approach in terms of dependable and flexible communication architecture that permits more flexibility in the use of time-triggered technologies and delivers a more effective, reliable and dependable system design.