A Framework for Standardized Partitioning Analysis in Integrated Modular Avionics Systems

With the increasing adoption of the Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architecture, ensuring robust partitioning, a fundamental technique of this architecture, is crucial. Additionally, the benefits of reduced verification costs that robust partitioning provides for software verification on multicore processor platform are undeniable. However, robust partitioning faces various challenges posed by the time partitioning and space/resource partitioning of shared and dedicated resources, which can compromise robust partitioning. Although DO-297 describes what a partitioning analysis should contain, there is still no systematic and complete guide available for organizing and addressing partitioning analysis activities in public research. We propose a systematic framework to guide the performance of specific tasks within partitioning analysis, including identifying top-level partitioning properties, decomposing these properties, extracting all potential error sources, combining potential error sources with robust partitioning properties to identify vulnerabilities and verifying mitigation means.