All IESF Events

KEYNOTE As electronic content increases dramatically in aerospace design, aircraft are evolving into sophisticated networked computing platforms. Unfortunately, there has not been a corresponding evolution in electronic design tools and methodologies, even as the industry moves towards a ‘more electric’ aircraft. To bridge this design gap, model-driven development is emerging as the best way to manage this complex process.

Dr. Rhines will provide examples and an assessment of where aviation leaders are in the process of implementing model driven design to meet ever more demanding program requirements and functional specifications. He then will outline what needs to be done, both now and in the future, to eventually realize the goals of the all-electric airplane: including architecting and optimizing designs, and implementing subsystems across organizational, geographic, and supply-chain boundaries.

TECHNICAL SESSION A discussion of all major market trends in the aviation business today, the presentation will cover growth rates, market risks, and competitive dynamics for all turbine-powered aircraft markets, products, and manufacturers. Specifically, it will look at military fixed and rotary wing aircraft, large commercial jetliners, regional aircraft, and business aviation. A Q&A session will also answer audience questions on any secondary and related markets, such as jet engines or defense spending.

TECHNICAL SESSION Aircraft and military systems are arguably the most complex software intensive products today. But the distributed nature of computing on board these platforms means nothing works without the electrical system that interconnects the components. This presentation explores the latest technology for electrical design, and how integrations with requirements, functional design, verification & project management tools are contributing to a true systems engineering approach to platform development. As the challenges and technical solutions are described, so the value of this innovative and compelling paradigm becomes clear.

TECHNICAL SESSION Any new aircraft program that involves an Integrated Modular Avionics System will need to comply with SAE ARP-4754A, Guidelines for Development of Civil Aircraft and System and RTCA DO-297, Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) Development Guidance and Certification considerations. As there are significant overlaps between these standards, an integrated certification approach is necessary to minimize the effort associated with compliance. This presentation will provide an introduction to efficient compliance with both standards.

TECHNICAL SESSION Reducing size, weight and power (SWaP), improving reliability, and addressing parts obsolescence are increasing concerns in mil-aero hardware development projects. A Via Configurable ASICs (VCA) can be an optimal solution to address these challenges. VCA technology integrates silicon-proven analog and digital resources onto pre-configured ASIC arrays requiring only a single via mask layer to customize the design and finalize the manufacturing process. VCAs offer a dramatically reduced-cost alternative to ASIC design, supporting both low volumes and fast development cycles. This session discusses and demonstrates how a systems or application engineer, with no IC design or modeling experience, can quickly develop and test their own custom mixed-signal integrated circuit. Instead of picking discrete and COTS parts from a catalog, the engineer can design their circuit interactively in a simple, schematic-based design environment, test it, and then have it quickly implemented in a VCA platform. The design environment (built on Mentor Graphics SystemVision tool) also supports multi-discipline system development and verifying the chip in the context of its resident system.

TECHNICAL SESSION One critical factor in thermal management of electronics systems is being able to accurately evaluate component level thermal behavior. When operating in a system, component performance can be influenced by many factors such as the operating conditions, the system environment and even the component manufacturing process and quality.Gaining a detailed understanding of the component thermal characteristics allows system designers to select the most suitable and reliable components for their application from vendors. It also helps them to assess the impact of thermal cycling on performance, and where it can potentially lead to a component failure due to component structure degradation. This session will focus on how thermal characterization of semi-conductor components via repeatable, accurate testing methods, can be applied to assess component reliability to improve overall component/system performance in mission critical applications.

TECHNICAL SESSION No longer can decisions regarding the system interconnect be left until late in the design process. The ever-increasing electrical content of platforms and regulatory mandates like EWIS are compelling companies to look for ways to evaluate harnessing architecture alternatives very early in the design process. Being able to perform weight, electrical verification, and other types of studies early provide a means to evaluate design alternatives quickly while cost-of-change is low. This breakout investigates capabilities that provide designers a way of ensuring they are developing the electrical distribution system that best meets design objectives.

TECHNICAL SESSION Activities on the right side of the Systems V are not only technically challenging but also important from commercial and regulatory standpoints. This breakout session examines the right side of the V for the electrical design domain, including the implications of EWIS regulations. Technologies introduced address subjects such as sub-system design integration, emergent behavior, requirements traceability, and test case management. These technologies make a key contribution towards a systems approach to platform level engineering.

TECHNICAL SESSION System Integrators are facing unrelenting challenges as the “More Electric Vehicle” tsunami continues across multiple design beachheads. Not only are new technologies being introduced to replace traditional actuation and control approaches, but the “deep knowledge” of how they work and how to effectively integrate them into efficient and high performance systems is now distributed across multiple engineering disciplines and often across multiple corporate boundaries. Fortunately, there is new standards-based modeling format and tool integration technology that supports multi-disciplinary design team collaboration. This session will demonstrate these capabilities as they apply to power generation and distribution systems (3-Phase AC), power conversion (AC/DC and DC/DC), and motor drive actuators in motion control systems. Tool integration includes co-simulation with LabVIEW™, Simulink®, C/C++, and SystemVision® (as well as Excel® for experiment control and automated stress analysis), and FEA-based model generation/import.

TECHNICAL SESSION In this session we will present the future of thermal simulation for aerospace and defense electronics, including infotainment, navigation, or tactical and/or mission-critical systems. This new technology will speed up the overall design process and enable better, more accurate, and efficient thermal analysis. We will show how to stay in the loop with the latest electrical design for thermal simulation and how to leverage the information that comes with the ECAD design for even faster simulation setup and accuracy, enabling engineers to get the design right the first time and be even faster to market than ever before. This future simulation technology is the key to all thermal designs decisions that enable better SWaP (Size, Weight and Power) of any industry-related electronics.

TECHNICAL SESSION The design regulations for FPGAs and ASICs in commercial and military aircraft are some of the strictest to adhere to and for good reason – failure of electronics in commercial aircraft can have catastrophic results! While the commercial air industry has mandated the DO-254 hardware design standard, military aerospace companies are adopting design processes similar to DO-254, some even having their own auditors. By taking a design approach that is requirements-driven and well integrated for FPGA and ASIC design creation through device implementation, an excellent design process can be followed that will enable meeting the compliance needs of DO-254 and other such regulations, while also improving the project’s efficiency, productivity, predictability and final chip quality. This session will present advanced chip design methods and practices that are now essential for any mil/aero FPGA or ASIC design project.

TECHNICAL SESSION Manufacturing engineers apply their skills and knowledge to huge volumes of data to accomplish complex tasks. This session shows how Capital’s capability extends into manufacturing process planning & optimization, seamlessly leveraging the harness design data. Capital Harness TVM, a brand new tool, will be introduced. It allows multiple end-to-end factory processes to be modeled. These are combined with design data to quickly & accurately synthesize harness manufacturing processes, right down to task level. This provides rich information and data for several purposes including DFM validation, harness costing, work instruction creation and feeding production systems.

TECHNICAL SESSION As increased content places ever greater focus on electrical systems design, organizations want to use best-of-breed tools. But, deployments can be hampered by the inability of disparate tools to communicate and share data. Indeed, seamless data integration is a key element driving ROI and cost avoidance. This session describes how the Capital software suite has been built to integrate with third-party applications from the outset. Various examples will be highlighted during the session to show how digital data continuity can be realized, including the use of newer technologies such as Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC).

TECHNICAL SESSION Electro-mechanical actuation systems are becoming more common in aerospace applications. Systems that have been traditionally based on hydraulic-mechanical actuators are now being replaced by electro-mechanical actuation systems in pursuit of the more electric airplane. The complex interactions among the mechanical, electro-magnetic, electronics, and control aspects of these systems demand comprehensive modeling and simulation capability in order to build useful virtual prototypes. A fairly significant time investment in model development is required to achieve high-value results, such as making good system trade-offs or identifying problems and solutions before the hardware is available. This model development cost is highest the first time this methodology is deployed. But similar to the benefits of “circuit reuse,” the knowledge “IP” that has been stored in these models can be rapidly and effectively reused on subsequent projects. This presentation will cover the multiple insights and efficiencies gained by the design team for an electro-magnetic brake system.

TECHNICAL SESSION Requirement management and traceability is essential for safety-critical design processes used within the development of aerospace or military projects. This session explores how to manage and automate requirements traceability from specification through design, implementation, and verification. This session will detail key capabilities, including impact analysis and report generation, and take a look at capabilities to help manage requirements at a system level. This session will also describe how requirements tracking fit into a team environment and how one can trace requirements throughout many different tools and engineering flow

TECHNICAL SESSION Poor reliability of a product can lead to extensive warranty cost, product recalls, and bad reputation. There are many causes of poor reliability, such as excessive heat, vibration and shock, marginal manufacturing, and poor power distribution network design. This session will discuss how virtual prototyping analysis can predict long-term reliability issues and help designers eliminate them without the use of expensive and time-consuming physical prototypes and test chamber testing.

TECHNICAL SESSION The modern flight simulator consists of a generic building block mated to an aircraft-specific front-end. With the rising complexity and need to manage configurations/change requests across projects, our legacy toolset began to struggle. During this presentation I’ll explain the functional criteria we needed to fulfill whilst evaluating Capital against other vendors, and how in the space of just over two years we have successfully moved six projects into the Capital design environment and the benefits this has brought us.

TECHNICAL SESSION As systems grow more complex, development programs grow larger and more difficult to execute successfully. Challenges in meeting cost and schedule targets show up across all industries in complex systems development. Recent research shows that correctly applied systems engineering approaches can make a significant impact on cost and schedule risk. This led to the Advanced Systems Engineering initiative, a set of concepts and directions aiming at improving program execution.
Though many buy into the mantra, “models are the answer” in systems engineering, we must distinguish what makes a model, a model. Beyond particular modeling languages and diagram types, models exist for various purposes, and can have relationships with each other, forming a kind of “model of models.” In Advanced Systems Engineering, the relationship between models and requirements is also changing and evolving to include both model-driven requirements and requirements-driven models.

TECHNICAL SESSION Today’s mil-aero programs are facing pressure from both an ever-growing, ever-evolving list of customer requirements as well as increasing certification requirements. This is driving companies to seek out and establish modern development methodologies that focus on both development efficiency and ease of certification compliance. Development efficiencies (including reuse, early testing, architectural optimization, abstraction, and automation) and compliance-driven software development methodologies (requiring a structured process, clear documentation, proof of thorough testing, and qualification of tools) do not need to be at odds with each other. This session introduces a model-driven methodology based on executable and translatable UML (xtUML), which provides the foundational elements of systems and software development that address both the efficiency and certification needs of today’s safety-critical programs.

TECHNICAL SESSION Complexities and quality requirements of FPGA and ASIC designs today are demanding new design approaches that start with creation. The level of design abstraction must now be raised above RTL in order to contribute an entire new dimension of benefits to design, especially for multi-core architectures. Raising the design description language up from RTL to electronic system level (ESL), which is TLM-based (transaction level modeling), enables more design to designed, explored, validated, and co-designed with corresponding software and firmware using virtual prototypes to result in faster design cycles, higher quality projects, and higher levels of hardware and software design assurance.

TECHNICAL SESSION The engineering of a complex system of multiple PCBs by a team of engineers requires not only an advanced systems definition capability but also the ability of teams of engineers to define the system and the design constraints concurrently. This session will illustrate Mentor's technology that is unique in the industry where multiple engineers can work on the same schematic and define high speed constraints on a system concurrently while viewing their peers' edits real time. It will also describe the ability to define the multi-PCB system top-down with automated backplane and cable integrity.

TECHNICAL SESSION Mentor Graphics Capital is an extremely powerful set of electrical design tools. The road from initial purchase to production usage can take several paths. Working with partners who have the experience of leading others to early success with Capital to create a plan that leads to successful use of the Capital tools, and following that plan, are essential to achieving the fastest return on investment and quickest proactive use of the Capital tools. This session will contrast several Capital customers who have chosen different paths to prepare for the use of Capital tools in production aerospace design environments.

TECHNICAL SESSION Efficient repurposing of engineering data into technical publications cuts project costs and timescales. And, efficient maintenance and repair maximizes aircraft availability. This breakout shows new technology that automates the assembly of electrical design data for consumption by publications environments; it also shows a new, lightweight, browser-enabled environment for maintenance technicians. Incorporating on-the-fly schematic generation, the technician's environment is highly navigable and can display effectivity-specific data to reduce the time and cost of fault diagnosis and repair.

TECHNICAL SESSION It is impossible to verify a design by testing every timing corner condition, or to find all unintentional interactions in a network within the timeframe of a typical project. And yet, the DO-178 certification standard demands the highest level of rigor to ensure aircraft safety. Having a tool that can perform complete verification of a complex network system in minutes, and be able to obtain certification credit for that verification, can result in huge savings during development and certification.
DO-178C introduced DO-330, Software Tool Qualification Considerations, as well as Tool Qualification Levels (TQL) 1 through 5. Marty Gasiorowski worked with Mentor Graphics in 2012 to meet the objectives of DO-330 for Volcano AeroQ , a TQL-5 tool. This was one of the first, if not the first, project to use DO-178C and DO-330.
Volcano AeroQ analyzes communication design in different aspects, such as utilization, queue delays, jitter, etc. The output of such analysis can be used to optimize communication to improve overall system performance. The output of the tool is a verification artifact that serves as credit towards certification of the communication design. If verification fails, the generated report clearly describes the errors found and guides the user on how to correct these. This presentation introduces Volcano AeroQ, a qualified communication verification and analysis tool for multi-protocol airborne network systems. It summarizes the processes used in the certification efforts and the key differences compared to DO-178B Verification Tool Qualification.

TECHNICAL SESSION The design of complex PCB systems requires the coordinated efforts of extended design teams as well as leveraging the intellectual property of the company such as component libraries and re-usable designs. This requires data management infrastructure that is specifically tuned to the PCB design process, as well as a collaboration protocol between the design team and the supporting corporate infrastructure. This session will illustrate Mentor's successful capabilities in this area.

TECHNICAL SESSION Today's complex electronic designs contain many behaviors that are difficult or even impossible to fully verify using conventional simulation-based verification techniques (For example, complex control logic, error recovery circuitry, Single Event Upset detection and correction logic, internal storage elements such as FIFOs, and many others). Verifying these types of design behaviors using simulation can lead to extremely long (and expensive) design verification tasks. Furthermore, even after "completing" the verification task, the design in question might not behave properly under all circumstances. It's common knowledge that bugs left in any design can be problematic, but for certain types and classes of designs, design errors are simply intolerable, especially if they are contained in satellites (where repair is intractable), safety critical designs (where bugs could cause injury or death), or military designs (where errors could place our military personnel or innocent bystanders in mortal peril).

Luckily, there are alternative approaches that can be used to verify design correctness that are significantly faster and more thorough than traditional simulation-based verification. One such technique is Static Formal Verification (also known as "Model Checking"). Static Formal Verification is a technique that utilizes a mathematical analysis of the synthesizable digital design, and creates an unequivocal proof that the design behavior in question is, indeed, 100% correct – or it will prove that the design is NOT correct (i.e. It contains a bug), and will provide a waveform trace demonstrating the failure. This analysis is exhaustive, covering all input conditions across all time. When a design MUST be correct, and extremely thorough or exhaustive verification is needed, then Static Formal Verification is obviously a good technology to have in your tool belt. Static Formal Verification has a very strong pedigree. Many companies have used it for more than 15 years, and its popularity is growing rapidly thanks to IEEE design and verification standards.

This presentation will discuss the use of Static Formal Verification, what it is and how it works, as well as the types of design behaviors where it is most and least effective. It will also discuss limitations and caveats, and provide links to papers and presentations containing more detailed information.