Handling heterogeneous partitioned systems through ARINC-653 and DDS

Many cyber-physical systems in the avionics domain are mission- or safety-critical systems. In this context, standard distribution middleware has recently emerged as a potential solution to interconnect heterogeneous partitioned systems, as it would bring important benefits throughout the software development process. A remaining challenge, however, is reducing the complexity associated with current distribution middleware standards which leads to prohibitive certification costs. To overcome this complexity, this work explores the use of the DDS distribution middleware standard on top of a software platform based on the ARINC-653 specification. Furthermore, it discusses how both technologies can be integrated in order to apply them in mission and safety-critical scenarios. We present and discuss a set of feasible system architectures to combine DDS and ARINC-653 standards as a solution to the future development of heterogeneous mixed-criticality systems.We analyse the integration of DDS and ARINC-653 by identifying the issues that may compromise the integration of both standards, and we also propose solutions to address them.We analyze and evaluate a case-study from the avionics domain to demonstrate the validity of the approach.The approach represents a further step towards the development of a safety-critical profile for DDS.