A framework for the design and specification of hard real-time, hardware-in-the-loop simulations of large, avionic systems

High-level design tools for the design and specification of avionic systems and real-time systems currently exist. However, real-time, hardware-in-the-loop simulations of avionic systems are based upon principles fundamentally different than those used to design avionic systems and represent a specialized case of real-time systems. As a result, the high-level software tools used to design avionic systems and real-time systems cannot be applied to the design of real-time, hardware-in-the-loop simulations of avionic systems. For this reason, such simulations of avionic systems should not be considered part of the domain containing avionic systems or general-purpose real-time systems and should be considered as an application domain unto itself for which design tools are unavailable.; To fill this void, this dissertation proposes a framework for the design and specification of real-time, hardware-in-the-loop simulations of avionic systems. This framework is based upon a new specification language called the Simulation Architecture Description Language. This specification language is a graphical language with constructs and semantics defined to provide the user with the capability to completely define the simulation and its software a new method for combining precedence constraints for a single software process. These semantics provide a more accurate description of the behavior of software systems having a dynamic job structure than existing semantics. An environment that supports the execution of simulation software having the semantics defined within this language is also described. A toolset that interfaces to the language and provides additional functionality such as design analysis, schedulability analysis, and simulation file generation is also discussed. This framework provides a complete design and specification environment for real-time, hardware-in-the-loop simulations of avionic systems.