The activity shall refine the processes, methods (including model based design), roles and tools for the effective deployment of the IMA-SP approach to spacecraft avionics

The Integrated Modular Avionics for Space (IMA-SP) concept introduces the role of System Architect to the spacecraft avionics domain. The System Architect has the key responsibility for negotiating the avionics resource allocation with the hosted application suppliers and then performing a system-level verification to ensure that the configured system is capable to host the applications and meet the system requirements. The allocation of the platform resources is an iterative process between the Architect and the application suppliers. It requires an extensive system toolbox to ensure that the Architect can correctly specify the allocation of resources for a particular partition in such a manner that the application supplier can design and develop their software in isolation to the remainder of the system components, yet the tool workflow must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate changes due to requirement modifications, requests for more resource allocations (e.g. CPU time, IO bandwidth), etc. Consequently, the system toolbox must be able to define, model and specify for each partition the I/O characteristics of the Time and Space Partitioning (TSP) system such as bandwith, latency, availability, and establishing hard real-time constraints for critical data, while ensuring the schedulability of the overall system.The system toolbox must be compatible with the avionics modelling language defined in other activities.The activity shall therefore cover the following tasks:1. Refine the existing understanding of the IMA-SP roles and processes and identify methods to improve the efficiency of the IMA-SP concept. Produce a set of guidelines documenting how to apply the roles and processes to the space domain.2. Tools shall be developed to enable the System Architect to model the system in order to perform system design and allocate and optimise the use of the available resources, including the CPU time and I/O for each partition. The avionics architectural language shall be considered as input to the activityThe outputs from these tasks shall be installed and demonstrated within the ESTEC Avionics Lab