The Future of Flight Will Be Built on SAFETY

by Andrew Reilly | Aug 29, 2021 | Avionics

Any doubts about the speed in which next-gen technology is changing aviation were swiftly removed last year on the battlefields of the South Caucus.

From September 27 to November 10, the militaries of Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh. Though numerically similar in manpower, the outcome was a rout; years of investing oil revenue into its military budget gave the Azerbaijani forces a decisive technological advantage.

The key weapon systems leading to the victory were unmanned aircraft. Used for reconnaissance, precision strikes, and propaganda, Azerbaijan’s Bayraktar TB2 drones cut through Armenian armored vehicles and facilitated lethally precise artillery strikes. The short but bloody conflict sent a clear message to the world: tomorrow’s aerial battlefield is already here.

The future of aviation was on display in those mountain valleys, but the full realization of its commercial potential is still years away. It is one thing to show performance capability for military objectives, another entirely to prove that technologies poised to shape aviation’s future – including unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which hover, take off, and land vertically — can safely integrate into the National Airspace System (NAS).

“Military use of unmanned aircraft is showing this technology’s utility but it’s a very different regulatory picture than commercial use,” said Tom Furey, CEO of Sagetech Avionics, which develops situational awareness avionics for unmanned aircraft. “There is substantial economic benefit for the commercial use of UAS — long-range pipeline inspections, bridge inspections, deliveries – but operators are limited by the need to interoperate safely in civil air space.”

The reality for unlocking the full capabilities of unmanned and electric aircraft — including long-term industry goals like Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), manned or automated air taxis that will zip passengers and cargo around cityscapes – is that regulators must be convinced these technologies will not disrupt a century’s worth of hard-earned safety infrastructure.

Archer says they are learning how to prioritize safety and power while balancing commercial factors such as component availability. The group has opted for using battery cells that are available today, in production at relatively low cost, says the company’s chief engineer, Geoffrey Bower.

Considerable research, testing, and standard setting must still occur before next steps like widespread Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) UAS operations receive the regulatory green light to become commercially scalable.

But every day, technological breakthroughs are pushing the industry closer to its long-term strategic goals. From increasingly sophisticated Detect and Avoid (DAA) systems that ensure unmanned aircraft recognize and act on collision threats, to remote pilot training built on long-established best practices, the future aviation sector is maturing rapidly – and answering many of the safety questions asked of it.

What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?

An example of the work that goes into answering these questions took place on June 14 in Bigfork, Montana, when uAvionix, which provides safety solutions for the integration of UAS into the NAS, conducted a 40-mile Beyond Radio Line of Sight demonstration of its internal test eVTOL UAS.

This demonstration showcased multiple technologies integral to unmanned flight: the company’s George autopilot flight control solution, which leverages DO-160G and DO-254 design assurance to enable autonomous flight; SkyLine Command & Control (C2) infrastructure management service, which manages communication with the aircraft; skyStation Ground Radio Systems (GRS), which expand the data link coverage range; TSO certified truFYX SBAS GPS, which provides a certified position source for UAS navigation; and pingRX Pro ADS-B IN DAA receiver

One of the myriad challenges facing unmanned entry into civil airspace was quickly apparent.

“We were mounted on a transmission tower that included high-power UHF broadcasts, and one of the two redundant radios experienced interference from that system,” said uAvionix president Christian Ramsey. “But the secondary radio was not affected; although they are designed to operate from the same frequencies, in the same enclosures, they have different antennas and filtering architectures to make them more robust against interference.”

With the interference mitigated through the company’s frequency hopping algorithms, the flight was uneventful — exactly the kind of demonstration that will need to be repeated consistently over the coming years for unmanned technology over 55 pounds (the current limit of Federal Air Regulation Part 107, which provides guidance and pilot certification for use of <55 lb. small UAS) to take the leap into widespread commercial viability. The industry is moving towards legally enforced protected spectrum frequencies, which regulators will control certification access to through Technical Standard Order (TSO) certification. To prepare for this, Ramsey says his team is focusing on the “enterprise service layer” for C2. “You’ve got radios dotting your landscape and each of those radios in isolation has the credential of a TSO, but that’s not all there is to it,” said Ramsey. “You have to figure out how to tie those radios together with the underlying network and architecture — cyber security, redundancy, and everything that will manage that system.”

Detecting and Avoiding Airborne Hazards

Manned aviation has long utilized commercial versions of an Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) to make interrogations of Mode C and Mode S transponders of nearby aircraft. Three versions of ACAS are in development for UAS: ACAS-Xu (fixed-wing UAS operating under Part 91 or Part 135 rules), ACAS-Xr (Xu for rotorcraft), and ACAS-sXu (sUAS).

Sagetech develops ACAS-based DAA solutions that aim to help push unmanned and EVTOL manufacturers through the ever-evolving compliance process using miniature components specially made for the unmanned market, like its MXS Mode S Transponder and MXE Mode S Interrogator.

“The ultimate goal is connecting proven robust and reliable collision avoidance technology directly to the autopilot so if you send your asset to inspect 300 miles of pipeline and it encounters another aircraft, it will automatically avoid it without someone having to watch every step of the way,” said Furey.

Daedalean’s visual systems, like this traffic detection system, are aimed at working on VTOL/rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft. They consist of several (one to four) avionics-grade cameras and a computing platform running the company’s algorithms. Daedalean image.

On July 27, Sagetech performed two types of flight trials of its DAA systems — manned, using Piper Archers, and unmanned using a Penguin C UAS — and demonstrated that its system always recognized the other aircraft and provided the appropriate alerts and warnings.

The VECTOR-600 autopilot for fixed wing, rotary wing, and VTOL UAVs is made by UAV Navigation.
UAV image.

“This was cooperative collision avoidance; our next step will be to integrate radar — non-cooperative sensors,” said Furey. “It will go into the same logic, it just won’t coordinate with the other aircraft. It will recognize traffic, classify it as a possible collision and react without communicating with the other aircraft.”

Avionics for Complex Missions

One key advantage of unmanned over manned aircraft is their ability to fly over hazardous areas where the operation of unmanned aircraft could be risky for the crew.

Industrial use of unmanned aircraft will require reliable functionality in difficult weather conditions, such as those found in marine environments. Madrid-based UAV Navigation, which develops autopilots and flight control systems for unmanned systems, specializes in this area.

One of the most difficult challenges for VTOL platforms is the transition from vertical to horizontal flight and vice versa; the UAV Navigation flight control system automates this critical procedure while providing operators with safety procedures and logical redundancy to ensure the aircraft reaches a safe landing zone in even the most challenging environments, such as those without a reliable GNSS signal.

“If you plan to go to a moving vessel or frigate, for example, you need to take into account factors such as wind turbulence and the electromagnetic environment,” said Miguel Ángel de Frutos, CTO of UAV Navigation. “It is a big piece of iron in the middle of the ocean; if you plan to use an altimeter, the interference could make it tricky.”

The company’s extensive research into causes of component failure, including the need to defend against jamming attacks, has borne fruit in products like its VECTOR-600 autopilot for fixed wing, rotary wing, and VTOL UAVs, which is designed to survive all individual sensor failures.

“We take pride in our approach to redundancy because it’s not about having just one landing — it’s about having 10 successful landings in a row,” said Ángel de Frutos.

Revolutions in Autonomous Flight

Minimizing human involvement in the flying process will be the greatest enhancement to aviation safety, argues Luuk van Dijk, founder, CEO and CTO of Switzerland-based Daedalean, which develops autonomous piloting systems.

Humans are not only a performance bottleneck to denser use of airspace, according to van Dijk, but will increasingly be a problematic factor for companies looking to make the AAM space profitable. Pilots take up space on the already small EVTOL aircraft, necessitate limited flight schedules, and pose labor supply risks (e.g., the projected pilot shortage).

To make the case that Daedalean’s systems based on Machine Learning can replicate and exceed human capabilities – in other words, the ability to solve problems currently only solved by human pilots and air traffic controllers — they chose to replicate piloting under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) as natural starting point.

“We concluded that in VFR, the visual information is much richer and much more reliable than what the existing instruments bring. To truly match that level of precision reliability and availability, you will have to make something that is as aware of its surroundings as the human pilots,” said van Dijk.

Phases of flight for autonomous eVTOL. Daedalean graphic.

Daedalean’s Machine Learning-based visual systems are aimed at working on VTOL/rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft. They consist of several (one to four) avionics-grade cameras and a computing platform running the company’s algorithms; the sensory input is fed into this in real time to provide situational data for visual positioning (which allows navigation alternative to GPS), traffic detection (visual DAA, including non-cooperative hazards) and visual landing — all the tasks performed by a pilot under VFR.

“We figured if you want to build autonomy to fit in the airspace as it is today, you have to make a pilot, or first a co-pilot, that can satisfy all those rules,” said van Dijk. “Reducing cockpit workload is really the proving ground for the technology. We have to show that we can reach a safety level that in turn allows an increased density of operations.”

Next-Gen Vehicles Built for Safety

Cutting edge developments on the avionics side are matched by innovations on the aircraft themselves. As Archer Aviation engineers develop the company’s full-scale eVTOL aircraft, Maker, they are learning valuable lessons about how to prioritize safety and power while balancing commercial factors such as component availability.

The company’s Meru battery pack is designed to maximize energy within mission constraints, such as power required for vertical takeoff and landing, in addition to safety and cyclizing cost requirements.

“There are really interesting future battery technologies, lithium metal, silicon anodes, etc. that have great promise but aren’t ready for commercialization yet,” said Geoffrey Bower, Archer’s chief engineer. “We’re taking the pragmatic approach using the cells that are available today, in production, at relatively low cost, while factoring in that our batteries will have higher power requirements and, at the pack level, more stringent safety and reliability type requirements than similar technology for the automotive sector.”

Maker has six independent battery packs that are each connected to two of its 12 motors, and the aircraft is designed to be tolerant to the failure of one of those packs. Redundancy, battery management system, accurate state of charge and health estimations, thermal runaway propagation prevention — these are all elements that the Archer team considers as it builds to certification requirements.

Bower is quick to note that redundancy itself does not guarantee safety; the team is equally focused on reliability of individual components and having the right quality assurance systems in place throughout the organization to maintain and improve safety.

“We’re also considering things like similarity of different processing chips, different software development teams — those are all things we’re thinking about from a safety and reliability standpoint,” he said.

Advanced Safety Testing

Testing can be one of the most expensive and challenging parts of next-gen aviation development. Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company that creates advanced aircraft and autonomous flight systems, is reducing friction in this space with its Centaur optionally piloted aircraft (OPA).

Based on a general aviation aircraft, Centaur provides a test platform with large payload capacity and streamlined access to the NAS with Aurora’s Airworthiness certificate.

“Centaur can operate in piloted, remotely piloted, or hybrid flight mode,” said Carrie Haase, executive lead, Flight Operations. “In hybrid mode, Centaur is controlled from a ground station while also carrying an on-board safety pilot to comply with regulations and ensure a safe flight. With an on-board safety pilot, testing can more easily be done, eliminating the need for time and cost-intensive travel to a remote test site.”

This summer, Centaur participated in testing with regulators to better understand the impact of large BVLOS operations in the NAS.

Haase notes that the company’s approach to autonomous flight system safety testing, which informs its support of a wide variety of Boeing next-gen projects, does not necessarily revolve around the absence of humans.

“Rather, it means decision-making for and with humans to perform in a trustworthy way,” she said. “We put experienced aviators on- or over-the-loop and in teams with unmanned systems in realistic simulations to test architectures, interface models, and interact methods against relevant scenarios.”

Also facilitating more streamlined testing practices is the increasing availability of certified, low-SWaP (Size, Weight, Power) components that allow manufacturers to focus their R&D efforts elsewhere.

“Up until recently, most of our potential customers have said ‘This is interesting but we’re not ready to deal with that yet — we’re worrying about getting our aircraft to fly,’” said Furey. “Now that they’ve gotten their aircraft to fly, they have to worry about the components required to fly their operations.”

Companies like Sagetech, UAV Navigation and uAvionix are reducing headaches by providing certified and certifiable avionics designed to minimize the amount of required onboard infrastructure.

“That’s critically important for reducing cost to the end user and conveniently translates much better into the AAM market where SWAP is at a premium,” said Ramsey. “Saving grams and milliwatts is much more important to them than to a GA operation.”

Refining the Human Factor

“In the remotely piloted world, you don’t have a shared fate — but you’re still operating an advanced technology in complex airspace,” said Joshua Olds, president of the Unmanned Safety Institute (USI), which provides remote pilot education and certification.

The “shared fate” refers the relationship that pilots have with manned aircraft. This is a psychological difference that remote pilot training must account for, he says, to help practitioners fully understand how their actions reverberate in the NAS.

Archer says redundancy itself does not guarantee safety; their team is also focused on reliability of individual components and having the right quality assurance systems in place to improve safety. Archer image.

Unmanned safety training organizations like USI are contributing to the maturation of the sector by building unmanned education around tried and tested aviation safety practices. “We can learn a lot from history,” says Olds, who notes that the most successful unmanned programs are run by existing aviation flight departments or longtime aviators.

The Unmanned Safety Institute (USI) is building unmanned education around tried and tested aviation safety practices. USI Image.

“There are so many parallels, such as the importance of maintaining a sterile flight deck even though you’re not ‘in’ a flight deck,” he said. “Crew resource management, aeronautical decision making, human factors — these are topics that are very familiar in traditional aviation and are critically important when geared to remotely piloted aircraft.”

As unmanned operations grow in complexity — such as companies receiving federal waivers for BVLOS or night operations — so does the knowledge required to safely mitigate the corresponding risks.

Olds provides an example of a BVLOS infrastructure inspection operation. To safely achieve the mission goals, technicians must ensure the technology will operate as intended, crew members must brief pilots on potential infrastructure (or lack thereof) that could impact command and/or control, and pilots must know how to act on this information.

“To become as risk-averse as possible requires embedding the knowledge and the skill-based perspective from not just the remote pilot’s perspective, but also the technician and flight planning perspectives to reduce or mitigate both ground and airborne risks,” said Olds.

Poised for the Future, Delivering Benefits in the Present

The industry’s full-throated effort to prove the safety of future technology is providing commercial opportunities right now. Products like Daedalean’s visual systems — which are already available to help enhance the safety of manned operations — exemplify this confluence of immediate benefit and long-term potential.

“While we prove in the GA market that this technology makes a great copilot, we build up the evidence that it could be a good first pilot too,” said van Dijk.

Efforts to enhance the safety of existing flight systems are intertwined with development of next-gen technology, said Ramsey, noting that the sector’s focus on low-power, low-cost solutions has resulted in some of the core engineering technologies the company uses for both GA and unmanned aircraft.

“We’re looking to take this technology we’ve certified for GA primary instrument use — if you lose other systems in your cockpit, these IMUs and displays are safe enough to get you home — and see how it can be leveraged in AAM,” he said.

Technology is also helping the industry visualize its future infrastructure. Archer Aviation’s proprietary Prime Radiant data tracking and simulation software projects future demand for UAM flights — optimizing routing of an aircraft through a city, determining the most efficient battery charge cycle, and providing a glimpse of how to assign passengers to vertiports and aircraft.

“We’re pulling in data sources to understand where people are travelling within cities, where to put the vertiports to address existing demand, and to zero in on vehicle requirements to see which trips provide the most value to passengers,” said Bower.

The forward-thinking nature of products like Prime Radiant sums up the state of the future aviation sector — always looking ahead to what’s next, even as it works to answer the questions that will open those doors.

Avionics Testing Is Meeting Complexity Challenges Head-On

by Andrew Reilly | Feb 27, 2021 | Avionics

A core challenge to developing today’s avionics systems is a familiar one throughout technology-based industries: how to keep pace with innovation without exploding your product budgets and development cycles.

The global aerospace industry’s embrace of increasingly sophisticated onboard computing is a trend moving swiftly in one direction. New aircraft are designed around the enhanced communication, navigation and control functionality offered by modern avionics, while legacy models can be retrofitted with them to extend functional lifespans.

Onboard technology is making flying safer and more predictable for all segments of the industry. But the increasing complexity of its software can create financial headaches when it comes to verifying and validating embedded systems to achieve DO-178C/ED-12C (global standards by which certification authorities approve commercial safety-critical software-based aerospace systems) compliance.

“Our customers tell us their biggest pain point is that software complexity has been driving up costs year after year at an exponential rate,” said Ricardo Camacho, senior technical marketing manager with Parasoft, a provider of automated software testing and application security solutions.

As the systems powering aviation’s future demand more computing power, bandwidth and interconnectivity, the lines of code ensuring they safely integrate into the airspace are similarly growing in both length and complexity. The result: more tests, more bugs, more debugging, more tests to prove the debugging worked — all requiring added time and expense, not to mention the threat of falling behind in the race to market.

“It’s almost impossible for a human to deal with all these small little things – these overflows, bitwise manipulations – in your head when there is this much code,” said Yannick Moy, senior software engineer with AdaCore, which offers commercial software solutions for Ada, C and C++.

The growing complexity of the software has accelerated test providers’ investments in market opportunities for helping avionics developers cut down on rapidly ballooning testing budgets.

The growing complexity of the software has created market opportunities for test providers who can help avionics developers cut down on rapidly ballooning testing budgets.

“It’s a pretty simple question our customers have for us: ‘These systems are more complicated but we want to get to market faster, and we’re not getting more people or more money — what’s your solution?’” said Todd VanGilder, vice president of Business Development for Wineman Technology (WTI), which specializes in test systems and test cell applications with a focus on hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation, and custom test machines.

The companies behind todays’ cutting edge avionics testing products have different answers to that question but share the same goals: providing tools that help customers ensure safety and security and expedite time-to-market, producing the audit trail required by certification authorities.

Intelligently Automating

“There’s a point where the complexity of the system itself means some parts of testing just can’t be done the manual way,” said Dr. Antoine Colin, head of Products and Services with Rapita Systems, which provides on-target software verification tools and services for the aerospace and automotive electronics industries.

In the face of mounting to-do lists, automation is helping engineers cut through the noise to focus their attention on the highest value tasks. Colin’s team designs the testing tools in the Rapita Verification Suite (RVS) with the objective of minimizing busywork that contributes to dragging development cycles past expected delivery date.

“Instead of managing builds and test scripts, your engineer can spend100% of their time analyzing data and viewing results of tests — understanding where things have gone wrong, figuring out coverage holes and determining issues with requirements,” he said.

Colin is an eager advocate for continuous integration (CI) tools like Jenkins and Bamboo, which he says are slowly being introduced into the avionics market after proven use elsewhere. Rapita’s tools enable teams using CI, a development practice in which programmers frequently integrate code into a shared repository, to get automated unit test, coverage, and execution time results with every new build, quickly alerting team members to behavioral anomalies.

Development cycle efficiency will also increasingly involve automation driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Camacho said that his team is excited about using AI and machine learning to organize and prioritize static rule violations to help mitigate time sinks caused by false positives, helping teams ignore violations that Camacho describes as “a lot of noise.”

“In software projects, you could initially encounter thousands of rule violations,” said Camacho. “But from the machine having taught itself, it will prioritize thousands of violations for you. Imagine the time and cost savings of not having your team of engineers go through this multi-day prioritization exercise.”

As part of Parasoft’s range of solutions for C++ testing, it offers tools that help cover gap in code coverage by displaying available solutions for setting up tests which identify required dependencies, pre-conditions, and expected coverage.

“You sit there as a test engineer and start looking at how to reach a particular line of code. You have multiple arguments and execution threads and some of them need to be in a particular state, and it gets really difficult to mentally figure out how to set up a test case,” said Camacho. “So instead of multiple engineers getting bogged down trying to hit particular lines, it moves things forward — the return on investment is quite large.”

Moving Left on the V-Model

Conscious of rising costs in software development life cycles, Albert Ramirez-Perez of Rohde & Schwarz is focusing on efforts that push bug identification to as early in the development process as possible.

“Our focus has traditionally been at the end of the life cycle, but we’re moving to early stages because that’s where we have seen our customers get the most value,” said Ramirez-Perez, who is Principal Market Segment Manager — Aerospace & Defense with Rohde & Schwarz, a manufacturer of test & measurement, secure communications, monitoring and network testing, and broadcasting equipment,

Ramirez-Perez said that Rohde & Schwarz will devote considerable attention to cloud-based testing, which can allow for increased speeds of deploying application build, will enable cross-collaboration among different verification and testing teams from early design test vector creation, up to final production testing.

“In order to decrease the cost of entry into a given testing scenario, now we can offer this set-up as a service,” Ramirez-Perez said. “The engineers in an early stage can access a complete Cloud4Testing test bench environment including access to high-end instruments, software enhanced analysis tools, and only paying by the value of one of the servers of testing something.”

“In order to decrease the cost of entry into a given testing scenario, now we can offer this set-up in a service manner,” Ramirez-Perez said. “The engineers in an early stage can access a complete test bench with higher instruments and only paying by the value of one of the servers of testing something.”

Simulators are a powerful tool for learning as much information about potential problems while they are still inexpensive to address, says WTI’s VanGilder. His company develops hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) solutions that can make electronic control units (ECUs) respond as if they’re in their end environment long before testing reaches the more expensive right side of the V-model — the software development industry’s ubiquitous process model.

“Obviously you can’t compromise safety, so it comes down to moving the testing more on the left side of the V-model where you can iterate quicker and it’s less costly to address issues you find. We’re talking things like model-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, where nothing is built yet — it’s just software and tools and simulation. The hope is that by the time you actually create the hardware and place the software on it, you’re discovering fewer problems and anomalies.”

The scalability HIL provides, as well as the flexibility in testing subcomponents while others may still be in development, will be critical to testing the industry’s next generation of airborne vehicles.

“With autonomous technology in transportation, you don’t just have transducers (sensors converting data from physical systems into electric signals) directly talking to one ECU, you have other ECUs that are looking at different transducers that are communicating to a multitude of ECUs,” said VanGilder. “Through HIL testing you can create whole subsystems to make sure every ECU is getting everything it needs from transducers but also from other smart ECUs that are in the system.”

Getting Ahead of Cybersecurity Threats

Security of onboard electronics has become a hot topic within the aerospace industry. The strongest defense against much-discussed threats like spoofing and jamming? Airtight code, says AdaCore’s Moy.

“From the start within our company we’re focused on the low-end of the software, that’s where you have the most intricate mesh of high-level objectives with low-level tasks,” said Moy. “How do these partitions communicate, how is the tasking operating — all these things must work as you intend for the high level purposes to hold otherwise everything breaks. You can see that routinely with buffer overflows, which can open systems up to hacking attacks in which breaking the local boundaries of data in the computer makes everything is possible, up to taking over the computer.”

AdaCore offers a wide range of products for the development and testing of the Ada programming language. Though less commonly taught than C and C++, Ada has earned a reputation for reliability on mission-critical systems — a strong appeal for avionics developers.

Moy says that the ever-present potential for an attacker with sufficient resources to find bugs left in the code, and the will to exploit it for nefarious purposes, demands the industry adopt a defensive posture.

AdaCore takes a proactive “security built-in, not bolted on” approach to developing its test tools, including a focus on detecting code problems — such as those found in the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE), an evolving list of common software security weaknesses — with advanced static error detection before the programs are even run.

“Leaving everything in the hands of the developer doesn’t fly anymore, especially not with security,” he said. “Now you can focus the human review on things the tool doesn’t know about, like what secrets the software must protect and what is the invaders’ ability to attack the hardware.”

Saving in Flight Tests and Beyond

Minimizing testing costs also includes maximizing the value of flight tests – by far the most expensive tests to execute. Precisely capturing the relevant data is critical to making these flights worthwhile.

That task is becomingly more difficult on data bus systems based on high-speed Ethernet and Fiber Channel technologies, said Troy Troshynski, VP of Marketing and Product Development, Avionics Interface Technologies, a division of Teradyne, that designs and manufactures of high-performance flight modules, test and simulation modules, embedded solutions, data bus analyzers, and support systems.

“We’re switching from the paradigm of a shared data bus where you can have a single access point and access to all the data, typically one or maybe 10 megabytes per second, right on a specific aircraft system, and moving toward 10 and even 25 gigabit networks where there’s no single point where you can connect, to get all of the data on the network,” he said.

Troshynski says that since the total aggregate bandwidth is higher, engineers must intelligently pick the data that they want to look at for a given test because it’s virtually impossible to grab at all of it. Data selection tools like AIT’s Avionics Network Data Aggregator (ANDA) make it easier to select only the data on the shared network that’s pertinent, such as only monitoring subsystems that are being re-certified.

“You have to define the subset of the aggregate data on the avionics system that you want to look at, selecting that data in real time and time stamping that you can correlate it, because it’s coming from multiple points all over the network,” said Troshynski.

Mandated systems like Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) require operators to stay vigilant for compliance well past installation, lest they wish to appear on the FAA’s Public ADS-B Performance Report (PAPR).

VIAVI, which provides test, measurement, and assurance solutions, developed an ADS-B transponder test that remotely and automatically tests the ADS-B system on the aircraft after it’s been installed, capturing that data and presenting the customer with a comprehensive report that helps with STC approval of transponder and GPS receiver systems. Having easy access to the full picture of system performance is important for staying airworthy. It also helps avoid unnecessary, and costly, maintenance cycles.

“When you verify performance on the ground, you’re assured that it will be operational and the aircraft won’t come back and have to go through another rework or troubleshooting cycle,” said Guy Hill, director of Avionics Test Products with VIAVI. “When you’re working through a backlog of aircraft to be retrofitted, not needing to have one come back through and go in the cycle again saves you time and money.”

Rohde & Schwarz also provides capabilities for testing terrestrial- and satellite-based communication and navigation systems, including a complete range of GBAS and GNSS constellation simulators. It’s an area that will see significant investment moving forward, says Ramirez-Perez.

“Being able to quickly and accurately validate high-precision onboard devices will be essential for bringing future market dynamics (such as autonomous flying taxis) to fruition,” he said.

Evolving to Meet Future Needs

The hardware upgrades necessary to power future technology will create new testing challenges. For example, earning certification for avionics architectures running on multi-core processors (MCPs) — processors which contain multiple central processing units (CPU) sharing tasks and resources in one physical unit — will demand rigorous testing to ensure predictable timing and behavior.

“Before, when we had separate boxes, there was clear communication and we knew exactly what was flowing from one place to another,” said Rapita’s Colin. “Now everything is in the same box — I’ve got virtual separation of things, but everything is still running on the same chip. How can you be sure things are well separated at the very low level on the chip?”

Moving from physical safety and security separation to logically separated, known as partitioning, requires verification that such partitioning is “robust,” says Nick Bowles, Rapita’s Marketing Manager, and definitive research is still ongoing. But the density of power provided by MCPs will be needed by future innovations such as autonomous flight and eVTOL, meaning demand for airworthy multi-core platforms is only going to grow.

Tobias Willuhn, program manager for Aerospace & Defense with Rohde & Schwarz, believes the next generation of airborne technology will serve as catalysts for further innovations in testing. The aviation industry as a whole is breaking new ground, he says, but the scale of the forthcoming challenges are beyond current compliance standards.

This has led to close collaboration between aircraft OEMs, component providers and the test measurement segment to identify future roadblocks and develop practical approaches for solving them.

“The development of autonomous vehicles includes a mounting phalanx of sensors that need to work seamlessly in order to provide all these services, especially when you’re flying – it’s like taking the automotive requirements and quadrupling it,” said Willuhn. “What does it mean to have a couple of kilowatts of electric power running while you fly with high precision and GPS-based navigation in an urban environment? Nobody has done it at this point, and there is a lot of demand for the industry to gain experience in this field.”

Willuhn offers the example of a future UAM business case of ordering an eVTOL flight that takes you from downtown Munich to the airport. For that to become a commercially viable reality, he said, all the vehicle’s systems and subcomponents must be fully integrated, operate highly reliably and interact with each other seamlessly. This will be a key point in bringing down operational costs – particularly for maintenance – and make UAM an affordable and safe service.

“But UAM is just a taste of what we’re seeing in this industry,” says Willuhn. “Think about the latest proposals and developments of major aircraft manufacturers and aerospace start-ups for future aircraft concepts with hybrid and electric propulsion — these are going to be game changers for the entire market, including the testing sector.”

Multi-Core Processors Are the Key to Unlocking Aviation’s Future By Andrew Reilly

by Andrew Reilly | Nov 10, 2020 | Avionics

Nearly every piece of technology that airline passengers use in their daily lives enjoys the performance benefits provided by multi-core processors (MCPs). Phones, tablets and computers derive enhanced efficiency by combining multiple central processing unit (CPU) cores, which can share tasks and resources such as cache memory, into one physical unit.

But avionics do not, continuing to rely on single-core processors (SCPs) even as the rest of the industry has moved on to MCPs. “These days in commercial aviation, everything is multi-core outside of avionics,” said Alex Wilson, director of Aerospace & Defense Solutions with Wind River.

Single-core processing remains stubbornly perched atop the avionics world because of the complexities involved with MCP certification.

While FAA and EASA have not yet published official policy regarding the use of MCPs in avionics, the FAA’s Certification Authorities Software Team provided the industry with a guide to certifying authorities’ thinking when it released the CAST-32A Position Paper in 2016. The paper outlines regulators’ main concerns for MCPs reaching the safety, performance and integrity standards of DO-178C, through which certification authorities approve commercial software-based aerospace systems.

The key challenge for MCP certification is providing evidence of predictable behavior between its interconnected subcomponents. According to Dave Radack, associate director – Software Engineering for Collins Aerospace, earning certification on a multi-core system requires analysis of the hardware and software through a systems integration perspective focused on how the interconnected components work together.

“It takes a disciplined, coordinated effort to put together a determinism story for something as complex as a multi-core system,” said Radack.

Mission-critical applications can potentially be impacted if software running on one core affects the performance of software running on another core. Known as “interference,” such impacts can arise through a wide range of possible interference channels, such as cores competing for shared resources. Potential time delays caused by interference are a risk deemed unacceptable in an industry that demands precision and redundancy.

The effects of cross-core interference are a key consideration that avionics manufacturers will need to understand in order to demonstrate the safety of their multicore systems, says Daniel Wright, Rapita Systems technical marketing executive. The accumulated evidence of the mitigation of interference channels needs then to be structured and presented to the certification authority to achieve certification. This requires powerful tools for the execution of timing tests, and robust processes to ensure the compliance with safety standards, such as DO-178C.

Despite these challenges, “the transition into using multi-core systems is inevitable,” says Wright. Rapita provides testing tools like its RapiDaemon technology that simulate maximum interference conditions – conditions that avionics manufacturers will need to show persuasive evidence of being able to identify and control.

Though Wright says their first multi-core certification is still likely 12-24 months way, he’s confident for several reasons that widespread integration of MCPs into commercial avionics is coming sooner rather than later.

For one, the industry’s never-ending quest to squeeze more power into less space. As operators demand functionality that keeps pace with modern innovations, the size, weight and power (SWaP) advantages offered by MCPs are one of the few avenues through which more power can be delivered without adding more weight. “It’s becoming difficult to meet demands for more functionality in your software when it’s on a single-core platform,” notes Wright.

The growing need to execute higher levels of functionality goes hand-in-hand with the increasing affordability of products capable of doing so, says Gregory Sikkens, director, Safety Critical Solutions for CoreAVI, which designs safety-critical graphic and video drivers.

“Today’s system-on chip-devices – which can have multiple processors and graphics processing units (GPUs) within one chip – offer high levels of computing and graphics performance for a reasonable cost,” said Sikkens.

There are also supply chain concerns. The inevitable result of lagging behind global design trends is facing a constricting market for what has become outdated technology. Single-core processors are an increasingly limited product offering little to no upside outside of safety-critical industries; the avionics industry will have no choice but to adapt as the market shifts.

“It’s going to be increasingly hard to get hold of single-core processors,” said Nick Bowles, marketing manager for Rapita Systems. “They’re only really produced for niche industries like aerospace, so their long-term availability is already in question.”

Less immediately urgent but equally vital to aviation’s future growth, MCPs are also a key to unlocking the much-hyped aviation breakthroughs of this era, including autonomous flight. Luuk van Dijk, co-founder and CEO of Switzerland-based Daedalean, describes the industry’s reliance on single-core processing as a roadblock to the development of next generation technologies.

“It’s a matter of processing limitations – it’s completely impossible to perform these functions [using single-core processors],” said van Dijk, whose company is developing autonomous piloting software systems for civil aircraft and future urban air mobility platforms.

The road ahead for MCPs in avionics involves answering complex questions to the satisfaction of regulators – a process with no precise timetable. But the unavoidable performance benefits will be a strong motivating factor to find those answers soon, says Lucas Fryzek, field application engineer at CoreAVI.

“If you look at the global industry outside of the safety-critical domains, all of the major performance gains we’re seeing come from adopting multi-core technology,” said Fryzek. “For industries with safety-critical requirements to catch up, they’ll need to have a plan for properly supporting multi-core integration.”

Certification Challenges

The rigors of the certification process are the primary reason why, despite its increasingly glaring technical limitations, single-core persists as the go-to option for commercial avionics.

“You have to prove to the certification authority that you can successfully run a Design Assurance Level (DAL) A application at the highest level next to a DAL B or C,” said Wilson. “Achieving that on a single-core system means time-slicing the CPU by giving each application time to run – reducing your performance impact to stay safe. Multi-core gives you real advantages because you’re able to give these functions a full core to use.”

But those same advantages come with liabilities. Wilson points out the necessity to prove to regulators that, for example, a non-safety application crashing won’t affect a safety-critical application. This has the effect of making testing a much more difficult and time-consuming process – particularly when every multi-core device has different architecture.

Measuring software timing behavior using single-core processors is relatively straightforward, says Wright, because you can clearly identify a deterministic worst case execution time for that software.

However, for a multi-core system, “It’s an incredibly complex multi-factorial endeavor,” Wright explained. “You have to consider hardware components and interconnects all impacted by different architecture, systems and partitioning mechanisms you have.”

The sheer number of potential causes for interference makes identifying them the longest task in the multi-core testing process, notes Radack. Interference can be found between cores, between cores and peripherals, between the arrangement of the processors, even between two different peripherals – which may be talking to each other and using resources that safety-critical software could also be using, causing interference without ever directly talking to those applications.

“You’re looking for any place where a given resource could be shared across multiple entities and then you need to look at the mechanism and the use case,” said Radack. “Is it a one-time shot or are there continually going to be collisions over shared resources?”

Another challenge is finding the right approach to mitigating interference, which Richard Jaenicke, director of Marketing at Green Hills Software, warns can drive tenfold growth in worse-case execution time, depending on the number of cores. To make the investment worthwhile, you must reduce interference without dramatically impacting the multi-core utilization that enables superior results.

“In order to get the performance and consolidation benefits of multi-core processors, you need to get high utilization of the cores,” said Jaenicke. “The problem is that most attempts to mitigate multicore interference cause vast underutilization of the processor cores. An extreme example is holding all cores but one idle to ensure no interference from the other cores.”

Future Opportunities

What do aircraft operators ultimately gain from concerted efforts by vendors and regulators to clear certification hurdles? The answer includes both short-term financial benefits and a long-term role as one of the linchpins for the industry’s technological evolution.

“Multi-core processing allows operators to include more processing capability into units of any type for less size, weight and power consumption, and ultimately less cost,” said Radack. “Installing additional components means adding weight from wires and mounting tray. If you can get that processing power without additional units, it translates into significant fuel savings over time.”

Rick Hearn, senior product manager with Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, says MCPs allow operators to absorb numerous applications that used to run in systems across the aircraft into a single unit.

“They also allow you to have different certification levels for all those different functions spread across multiple cores,” added Hearn, whose company provides safety-critical hardware for the defense and commercial markets.

There are also tangible safety gains, according to Hearn. When information is getting to pilots faster and clearer, “[it] decreases the effort that the pilot has to put into flying the aircraft, lessens the workload, and ultimately creates an overall safer working environment,” said Hearn.

MCP-derived performance will ultimately be necessary to continue using the increasingly complex functionality available to pilots. For example, MCPs can drive sensor fusion algorithms for operating in degraded visual environments. Figuring out certification issues is “extremely critical” to being able to keep up with these kinds of technological advances, according to Radack.

“All of these emerging technologies that we’re looking at leveraging into avionics – machine learning, A.I., advanced visual systems – come at the price of processing needs,” said Radack. “To perform these advanced features in a world where timely performance must be guaranteed, you need the processing capabilities to run through all those algorithms quickly. That goes well beyond what our fielded aviation systems deploy today using single-core processors.”

For an aerospace industry peering at a future in which transportation is transformed by the confluence of physical and digital breakthroughs, multi-core processing has become a key component of efforts to bring the next generation of cutting edge technology to life.

“Most next-gen technologies will require multi-core processing as well as other processor enhancements such as A.I.-specific instruction set extensions,” said Jaenicke with Green Hills Software, which provides real-time operating systems and embedded development solutions.

Jaenicke notes that most types of A.I., such as machine learning and deep learning, are still very far from being accepted in safety-critical avionics. DO-178C certification with multi-core processing has taken more than a decade, and he expects full implementation of A.I. to take even longer.

“That said, A.I. can be applied now to non-safety-critical applications such as fuel consumption optimization, analyzing engine data for predictive maintenance, and strategic weather planning,” said Jaenicke

MCPs play a critical role in Daedalean’s efforts in the autonomous flying sector. To process visuals alone requires a 5-12 megapixel digital camera feeding the A.I. 20-30 frames per second – demanding up to 6 gigabits per second, which van Dijk says he could never do with SCPs.

“We want to use modern computer vision and deep learning techniques that involve neural networks, so that I can show an image and it will draw a box around the runway or airplane,” said van Dijk. “We have a large amount of simultaneous operations, and we need multiple processors to do it.”

He forecasts a future in which advanced avionics can enable aircraft operators to reduce the role of what is, statistically and increasingly in comparison to technology, the weakest link in the aviation process: the human component.

“Right now, our aviation system in IFR relies on two humans communicating over voice link, a system already operating at capacity,” said van Dijk. “To make denser use of the airspace, including urban air mobility and eVTOL, you will need to eliminate the human as the performance bottleneck. That is impossible without multi-core processing power.”

The certification challenges are not trivial, says van Dijk, but he says misconceptions about MCPs being difficult to understand are overwrought. Wilson agrees, saying that the industry generally knows where multi-core processors stand in the safety certification process, and there is widespread agreement that they will ultimately become the norm. “What really excites me is A.I. – adding it to avionics is such a complete unknown because it’s so different to the ways we’ve developed software before,” he said.

He says that the increasing attention it’s receiving within the industry represents a promising sign that intellectual and financial resources are being put toward the question.

“You’re seeing more and more people at conferences discuss how they’d certify A.I. on an aircraft,” he said. “I doubt regulators have the same opinion right now, but I think it’s got to come at some stage.”

Extending Fleet Life with COCKPIT DISPLAY UPGRADES By Andrew Reilly

by Andrew Reilly | Jul 25, 2020 | Avionics

Some commercial airlines and cargo operators seeking to prolong the lifespan of their fleets have upgraded flight decks from cathode ray tube (CRT) displays to modern liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology.

The wide range of available solutions for upgrading cockpit displays can require significant upfront investment, but also extend the useful life of the aircraft by upwards of 15 years. Designed to stave off obsolescence issues through enhanced functionality, reduced and more predictable maintenance costs, and compatibility with a wide range of current and future avionics upgrades, these products can revitalize older aircraft and allow operators to maximize their investment on the aircraft structure — but may not be the right fit for every air carrier’s needs.

Meeting Obsolescence Head-On

The end of the CRT era is upon us, bringing challenges to an aviation industry that still operates many legacy aircraft using the fading technology.

The sole remaining manufacturer of the technology, Japan-based Toshiba, is closing its last CRT manufacturing plant this year. Operators and avionics companies have been working to prepare the industry for disruptions caused by this transition.

“We understand that the current CRT-based electronic flight instrument system (EFIS) will not be supported by the OEM beyond 2020, therefore an affordable LCD replacement solution needs to be introduced to operators all across the globe,” said Alexander Krause, product sales manager with Lufthansa Technik, which offers a broad suite of cockpit avionics upgrades.

Krause notes that the most common types of aircraft for display upgrades are aircraft equipped with old CRTs — such as Boeing 737 Classics, 757 and 767 — but which still have many years of structural life remaining.

An immediate effect of CRT obsolescence will be difficulty finding replacement parts for thousands of active aircraft still using legacy displays. Replacing these increasingly vulnerable parts can save operators headaches down the line.

“Transitioning flight deck displays to LCD technology restores predictability to the supply chain by resolving the CRT obsolescence issue,” Thomas Global Systems CEO Angus Hutchinson told Aerospace Tech Review.

To resolve impending CRT production concerns, Thomas Global Systems worked in-house and with operators to develop its TFD- and EFI-Series plug-and-play LCD flight deck solutions. Available for Boeing 757/767 and 737 Classic and a wide range of regional and corporate aircraft, these products were designed to address CRT obsolescence, deliver the display performance and life cycle cost benefits of LCD technology, and provide a platform for new functionality, while offering an alternative to large-scale flight deck modifications and its associated installation costs.

“The more extensive LCD upgrades for the 757/767 and 737 Classic have been out in the market for some years now, and many operators have yet to equip,” says Hutchinson. “We wanted to provide customers with a practical and cost-effective alternative to resolve CRT obsolescence, with the capability to add functionality over time.”

In a contrasting approach to combating CRT obsolescence, Collins Aerospace offers a full-fledged 767/757 Large Format Display System retrofit, which updates legacy aircraft flight decks with modern technology similar to that found on the 787, 777X, and 737 MAX.

By removing 29 legacy LRUs (line-replaceable units) and adding 11 modern LRUs, Joe Gallo, Collins Aerospace global marketing director, pitches a comprehensive flight deck transformation that’s focused on extending the lifespan of aircraft well into the 2030s.

“If the customer is just doing a display change, that’s limited,” says Gallo. “If they can do a system replacement which has a graphics generator and all the symbology they’d need, adding a software feature function is much simpler than swapping out hardware.”

Gallo notes that customers are often surprised by the sheer number of potential obsolescence issues with older aircraft. The difficulty (and sometimes impossibility) of fixing legacy components such as the Mach Airspeed Indicator can leave operators at the mercy of the used market — a situation that can quickly get financially and operationally untenable if the component fails to last more than a couple hundred hours.

“The big difference here is taking this older, obsolete technology off of the aircraft,” says Gallo, adding that there are inherent longevity advantages to replacing analog equipment, which can be difficult to support, with more reliable digital components.

Offering a middle ground between plug-and-play options and a full flight deck retrofit, the Innovative Solutions & Support (IS&S) Cockpit/IP Flat Panel Display System (FPDS) for the Boeing 737 similarly aims to replace that aircraft’s legacy EFIS, but with the promise of minimal wiring modifications by utilizing the existing equipment racks and wiring connections.

“The IS&S system replaces more than 20 legacy instruments, including airspeed and altimeter, that are typically the lowest reliability instruments with the most obsolescence issues,” says Kevin Cravens, IS&S vice president, Program Management. IS&S also does a B757/B767 Flat Panel Display System retrofit that is already on more than 400 planes.

Making the Bottom Line Work

The value proposition of installing a simple unit replacement or committing to a full flight deck retrofit — or any solution in between — will vary based on air carrier type and expectations for longevity.

“Some of the conversations with customers, specifically with major airlines, have been ‘I need to fly the modern aircraft that are as efficient as possible, and we’d like to get our fleet younger,’” says Gallo. He adds that airlines often view fuel inefficiencies on legacy aircraft as making it impossible to justify the cost of a flight deck retrofit.

However, noting the “significant difference” between demands on passenger and cargo carriers, he says the passenger-to-freighter conversion market has been the sweet spot for the Collins retrofit program. The business case for justifying Collins’ estimated three-year payback has been easier to make with cargo partners such as UPS, FedEx and Atlas that can plausibly expect over a decade of additional service from the upgraded aircraft.

“These aircraft still have structure time on them so they go to cargo and get fitted there, lengthening the opportunity for that aircraft to fly another 15-20 years, whereas in a passenger environment it may not be able to, given the number of hours it would get taxed with each year,” says Gallo.

A major selling point for Collins has been the streamlined training and maintenance benefits offered by the 757/767 retrofit’s display commonality with newer generation Boeing aircraft.

“It is a full Boeing complement to the aircraft so if they had other aircraft – the symbology, applications and different options they would offer are all available are the same as the 787, 777X, 737 MAX,” he says, describing it as an OEM-driven baseline solution. “And as they look into future activity like ADS-B In, if they want to put an In-Trail Procedure activity on the display technology and Boeing already certifies it on aircraft like the 787, they could easily backfit that to their legacy aircraft.”

Beyond the benefits of fleet uniformity, Kevin Paul, vice president, Engineering Value Stream for L2 Aviation, exclusive manufacturer for the for the 757/767 large display system package for the Collins LDS system, notes there are immediately tangible benefits.

“There is a weight reduction of about 150 pounds which results in operational cost savings through reduced fuel burn,” says Paul, whose team did the engineering and were the FAA liaison for STC approval for the system. “There is also maintenance cost savings resulting from a five-times increase in display system reliability.”

Over the course of installing more than 500 systems at airlines (American, Icelandair, Jet2.com), cargo carriers (FedEx, DHL, Kalitta, CargoJet), and smaller VIP fleets (US government), IS&S has focused its FPDS value proposition on a combination of tangible savings benefits – including a roughly 175 pound weight reduction and equipment that outperforms calculated mean time between failures by a factor of four — and an intricately customizable installation processes.

“We have evolved our installation kit (panels and wires) to meet the needs of various installation scenarios,” explains Cravens. “Some installers prefer more labor and less material, so we added a configuration to the supplemental type certificate (STC) that allows repurposing of instrument panel wiring and Korry annunciators from the pre-modified airplane; other installers prefer to minimize downtime so we added a fully populated instrument panel with new wires and annunciators to the STC allowing quick removal of old, and installation of a new populated panel.”

Explicitly designed for the retrofit market, the IS&S installation repurposes as many wires, connectors, and trays as possible, while still maintaining ADS-B, RNP and CPDLC capability. The goal, says Cravens, is to ensure a downtime within the company’s typical range of five to seven days.

“We have seen airlines and MROs routinely complete the installation in less than 400 man hours,” says Cravens. “With some prudent preparation prior to aircraft induction, one MRO has been able to turn an aircraft in three days.”

Negligible downtime is a key selling point for Lufthansa Technik, which highlights the lack of need for pilot retraining and no changes to cockpit wiring – a feature which can drastically simplify the process installation process.

“We have done it already during a lunch break on a Boeing 757,” says Krause.

Thomas Global Systems has designed its TFD-7000 display systems for the Boeing 757/767 and 737 Classic, and its counterpart solutions for corporate and regional aircraft, to virtually eliminate aircraft downtime. Hutchinson says the plug-and-play feature is essential to their product line’s market fit as a practical and efficient solution for operators seeking the performance and life cycle cost benefits of LCD technology at a friendlier price point.

“These displays can be installed at the gate if required, or on overnights,” says Hutchinson. “It’s very quick to convert from the CRT to LCD display, almost instant, and that’s a key benefit for operators because the alternative of more extensive modifications can add cost and be more time consuming.”

Future-Proofing Your Aircraft

In addition to tackling immediate issues related to CRT obsolescence, as well as removing some maintenance challenges presented by outdated high-LRU units, upgrading to the modern range of LCD displays provides a roadmap for adding future functionality.

“The message we’ve received from operators [across markets] has been that they want practical replacements for their CRT units that can be installed efficiently, and the capability to readily add functionality as needed in the future,” says Hutchinson.

To create the TFD-7000 solution for the 757/767 and 737 Classic aircraft, Thomas Global adapted their high-performance AMLCD design and trademarked analog-to-digital software core, and added new graphics and graphics overlay capability and a growth platform, including a built-in card slot for new display functionality. The unit also has capacity for new ARINC-429 and discrete inputs using the existing rear connector, and 10% added display area for new symbology.

These potential avionics enhancements represent a viable path through the next decade and beyond for equipped aircraft. Touting a customer base of major passenger and cargo operators, including launch customer Delta Air Lines, Hutchinson argues that the increase in performance relative to existing CRT displays more than justifies the expense.

“Whether customers are solving for today’s CRT obsolescence, or also planning for evolving airspace requirements, the TFD-7000 Series delivers a high-performance solution with sound economics,” says Hutchinson.

The powerful components included in the Collins 767/757 retrofit program provide operators with immediate access to a wide range of next-generation avionics upgrades. Some of these à la carte options include cockpit-display of ADS-B traffic — providing situational awareness and growth to In-Trail Procedures — and heads-up guidance, which Collins says will be compatible to similar systems it has installed on 787, 777X and 737 MAX platforms.

“If they want to do ADS-B, we can give them opportunities to do that on the display technology or incorporate that into a handheld device,” says Gallo. “If they want to incorporate a synthetic vision system, the graphics generation has enough horsepower and processing power to perform that function.”

While the looming specter of CRT obsolescence may be driving the interest in LCD cockpit display upgrades, it’s the vast potential to maintain modernization in legacy aircraft for years to come that may ultimately convince operators that the investment is worthwhile.

“This is a great opportunity for airlines to elongate an aircraft that is coming new from the factory with 30-to-40-year-old technology, and putting them in a position to support any kind of future applications they would need,” says Gallo.