Capella based system engineering modelling and multi-objective optimization of avionics systems

Capella is a system engineering public domain tool which has been recently released by THALES. It is a model based systems engineering tool that implements the Architecture Analysis & Design Integrated Approach (ARCADIA) framework. This paper proposes a process specification, design and optimization of a distributed avionics system. Capella is used as a design tool for Distributed Integrated Modular Avionics (DIMA). The DIMA architecture has interesting power, weight and cost metrics which are highly demanded by aerospace industry. The main challenges faced by DIMA system architects are related to functions allocation and device physical allocation. This problem refers to the system functions translation into tasks and further hardware allocation. These problems are hard to solve manually due to the high number of functions in modern systems. The design and development of DIMA systems can be dramatically improved using optimization techniques. Moreover, allocation strategies based on different figure of merit can be evaluated at a smaller cost. In this paper we develop a simplified DIMA model using the Capella tool and the framework ARCADIA. The model is extended using viewpoints for specifying additional system constraints. Model parameters are extracted to specify a binary integer problem for the system allocation process automation. Different cost functions are evaluated for a simple study case.