Software Engineering Institute

This paper appears in the AHS International 71st Annual Forum and Technology Display, Avionics and Systems.

Challenging problems associated with system software complexity growth are threatening industry's ability to build next-generation safety-critical embedded systems, including helicopter avionics systems. Contributors to these problems include the growth of software, system integration, and interaction complexity exacerbated by ambiguous, missing, incomplete, and inconsistent requirements. Problems continue to hamper systems in the areas of resource utilization, timing, safety, and security. A new approach called the Architecture-Centric Virtual Integration Process (ACVIP), which is based on Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Standard AS5506A Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), is being developed and investigated by the U.S. Army to address these challenges. ACVIP is a quantitative, architecture-centric, model-based approach enabling virtual integration analysis in the early phases and throughout the lifecycle to detect and remove defects that currently are not found until software and systems integration and acceptance testing. In an effort to investigate such an approach, the government, in conjunction with researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and Adventium Labs®, is conducting ACVIP requirements, safety, and timing analyses in parallel with the Joint Common Architecture (JCA) Demonstration (Demo).