Intelligent Edge Technologies for Aviation

Shifting functionality of onboard aviation systems to software rather than using traditional hardware approaches makes them more cost-efficient, flexible, and future ready. Intelligent edge technologies are essential to take full advantage of this transition.

Longevity is critical to the cost-effectiveness of civilian and military aviation systems. To extend their lifespans, it must be possible to update those systems as needed, both to maintain and to add functionality. The inherently more dynamic nature of software-based versus hardware-based systems supports continuous updates and system modernization. As a result, the level of software-defined functionality in aviation systems has grown steadily over time. Maintenance based on installing code rather than system boards is simpler and more cost-effective, which makes incremental changes possible for more granular control and heightened cyber resiliency.

Growing software capability is accompanied by increased software complexity. The Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute reports that, for decades, source lines of code deployed in both civilian and military aircraft have been doubling in number about every four years¹. In the context of avionics for specific military aircraft, a recent steep growth trend is illustrated in Figure 1 ².

Developers for both civilian and military aviation share challenges that include security, cost, and time-to-market as they digitally transform aviation systems with software for the intelligent edge. As the complexity and sheer amount of software developed for embedded aviation systems continue to grow, so do these challenges.

CYBERSECURITY THREATS

Each software component deployed on an aviation system represents a potential attack surface that must be hardened, monitored, and kept up to date. Even after a threat has been identified and mitigated with a software update, distribution of the patch throughout a fleet of aircraft generally depends on hands-on involvement by technical staff. This approach can prolong the update process and extend the duration of vulnerability to the threat, as well as dramatically increase the software’s total cost of ownership (TCO). Enabling secure over-the-air software updates will be an important enabler for improved security and cost efficiency.

CERTIFICATION COST AND COMPLEXITY

As aviation systems have become more software intensive, the certification burden has grown dramatically in cost and complexity. To cite an example from a recent naval program, in order to demonstrate compliance with 70 DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) STIGs (Security Technical Implementation Guides) for 150 software components, the team had to execute 120,000 test cases. Due to the manual nature of the process, that certification work cost $250,000, highlighting the need to streamline and automate testing.

 As the role played by software-defined intelligent edge technologies grows in onboard aircraft systems, the overall efficiency of deploying and maintaining aviation systems increasingly depends on the efficiency of the software development lifecycle. Embedded software for aviation systems draws on modern development practices adopted from the enterprise to enhance security, cost-effectiveness, and agility.

CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION/CONTINUOUS DELIVERY AND DEVOPS

In place of older, linear processes such as Waterfall, commercial software development has broadly adopted iterative approaches based on frequent code releases. Agile concepts such as rapid, closely defined development sprints have been refined into cyclical continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, as illustrated in Figure 2. Here, development and operations activities are combined into DevOps practices, where continuously created code is merged into the shared repository several times per day, automatically checked for errors, and delivered into production. Using DevOps and CI/CD approaches makes development of aviation systems more efficient, while the small scope of individual changes helps isolate faults and accelerate remediation and code maintenance.

THE EMERGENCE OF DEVSECOPS

DevSecOps is an emerging discipline that adds to the depth of involvement by security professionals in the DevOps pipeline, as illustrated in Figure 3. Security protections such as code scanning and analysis, threat modeling, and penetration testing are woven deeply into the software lifecycle, rather than being bolted on afterward. DevSecOps is well suited to accommodating complex security needs of mixed-criticality and combined real-time and non–real-time workloads handled by aviation systems. The DoD has committed to the use of DevSecOps practices in 95% of all new software development by FY 20265.

SIMULATION-DRIVEN, AUTOMATED TESTING

Particularly in the context of certifying software components, testing represents massive resource commitment and expense for development organizations, due to the high number of test cases involved and the need to obtain and dedicate target hardware for testing purposes. Simulation and automation address these issues by creating the target environment entirely in software and eliminating the need for operators to manually configure, execute, and document each individual test case. Particular effort is being applied currently to automate traceability and artifact creation during testing, to avoid the tremendous cost typically incurred.

CLOUD-NATIVE TOOLS

Operating a private cloud environment onboard aircraft drives efficiencies and agility by enabling modern approaches and intelligent edge technologies, based on containers, microservices, CI/CD, and DevSec-Ops. Legacy on-prem tools are poorly suited to cloud-driven development models, making cloud-native tools an essential prerequisite for modernization. Cloud-native tools and technologies are also ideal for use cases in which sensors attached to various aircraft subsystems create an onboard, cloud-based IoT network.

VIRTUALIZATION AND CONTAINERS

Containers and hypervisor-based virtualization work together to create flexible implementations. Hypervisors enforce hardware-based data isolation between virtual machines (VMs), while incurring overhead based on the fact that each VM must run its own full version of the operating system (OS). Containers are relatively lightweight and may share a single copy of the kernel, with partitioning based on software measures including Linux control groups and namespaces. They enable modular software architectures that lend themselves to CI/CD models and help reduce the scope and costs associated with certification testing. From a cybersecurity perspective, containers enable integrity checking by verifying against a known good container image from the container registry. Recent product updates allow the creation of real-time OS containers with OCI-compliant container support. (See the VxWorks® section to learn more.)

5G NETWORKING

As the emerging basis of short- and medium-range radio, 5G networking enables high-throughput, low-latency communications between aircraft as well as from aircraft to base stations and other installations. In addition to operational communications, 5G networks are a primary enabling factor for fast, secure, over-the air software updates, which are essential to efficiently keep onboard systems current throughout a fleet of aircraft. Expanded encryption and focus on machine-to-machine communication in 5G compared to 4G make it well suited to use in reimagined aviation use cases.

AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

As data sizes in aviation use cases reach beyond human scale, AI and machine learning prove increasingly valuable to help sort through massive data sets to identify trends and patterns that can yield insight. AI and machine learning are key forces in the future of how computer science is expressed at the solutions level. Current applications are focused on in-flight analytics related to equipment and situational data, while development toward goals such as autonomous flight also continues.

Wind River® software development solutions draw on decades of industry leadership for aviation-related software, both civilian and military. As an integrated, comprehensive set of technologies, they improve solution quality and security while accelerating time-to-market.

WIND RIVER STUDIO

As the first cloud-native platform for development, deployment, operations, and servicing of mission-critical intelligent edge systems, Wind River Studio enables innovation for the aviation industry. Studio provides developers with an integrated, expandable set of tools that empower them to efficiently and cost-effectively develop aviation software built to high standards of security, safety, and reliability. The platform is architected to build solutions at cloud scale, accelerating transformation. This future-focused, cloud-delivered environment provides developers with always-available, always up-to-date Wind River tools to power aviation’s future.

VXWORKS

As the market-leading real-time OS, VxWorks is in service aboard more than 80 types of civilian and military aircraft, particularly for safety-critical applications such as flight controls. VxWorks provides robust built-in support for both containers with OCI-compliant support and hypervisor-based virtualization with VMs. Its standards-based architecture builds business efficiencies by allowing software components to be shared across diverse airborne platforms. Additionally, conformance to standards such as POSIX® and FACE™ have been leveraged in the certification of VxWorks to DO-178C, IEC 61508, IEC 62304, and ISO 26262 safety standards.