A Comparison of Avionics Open System Architectures

Abstract

Building high-integrity, safety-critical systems is one of the primary activities of the projects within the United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD). Recognizing the need for affordable and effective solutions, the DoD calls for the use of Open System Architecture (OSA) solutions in Better Buying Power (BBP) 3.0 [1], Department of Defense Instruction 5000.02 [2], and the Defense Acquisition Guidebook section 4.3.18.15 [3]. The objectives of these documents are to avoid vendor lock, enable affordable capability evolution, and promote innovation. There are several activities underway to define standards that support the development of these systems. In the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), the Unmanned Aerospace Systems (UAS) Command and Control (C2) Standard Initiative (UCI) standard has been defined to address the needs of providing an open architecture specification for unmanned aerial vehicles [4]. The Open Mission Systems (OMS) standard [5] developed by the US Air Force utilizes commercially developed Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) concepts and middleware in its definition along with the UCI standard. The Air Force is looking to extend the capabilities of the OMS standard to facilitate the rapid evolution of avionics systems. The Open Group has constructed a consortium of government, industry, and academia experts to develop the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) [6]. FACE is an open architecture effort that is intended to standardize the development of aviation components. The paper will present the basic definition of open systems architecture followed by a description of three of the OSA standard activities that are being conducted to address the direction from the DoD. The paper will then examine the similarities and differences between each of these initiatives. Finally, the paper will discuss the usability of OSA.