The Importance of a System-Level Approach when Bringing in New Technologies in Avionics

In the era of multiple industry trends and new technologies, avionics systems can benefit from several innovations. The complexity of modern electronics increases quickly and is being introduced as never before in new applications. At the algorithm level, the use of deep neural networks helps to solve problems never believed to be doable before. At the architecture level, hardware artificial intelligence accelerators, embedded graphical processing units, embedded sensors, etc., make it possible to create very powerful new functions. The list of new technologies is long. Besides technical challenges, system integrity and availability must be assured when integrating these new technologies into avionics functions. In this paper, we present emerging technologies and why a system-level approach is necessary to be used when implementing these technologies. We also introduce supporting means for design assurance, fault-tolerance techniques, and novel safety assessment methods to assist in the integration of the new functionality. We illustrate the importance of a system-level approach through an example. Our example shows that when developing functions with new technologies and fault-tolerant architectures, the system safety assessment process is crucial for properly implementing a fail-safe design.