SP4 will design and test a prototype IMR system capable of interfacing with sufficient bearers to prove all of the concepts derived and developed in the SANDRA communications system. The IMR will be integrated in the overall SANDRA test-bed in SP7. The top priorities of this development will be to demonstrate the ability to:
- Reconfigure automatically in the event of failure of any of its constituent elements to give priority to the preservation of the highest criticality links currently in operation. This will require some management of the protocol stacks across the IMRs to maintain some harmonization of their statuses. Transparent fault tolerance of the SANDRA communications system will be validated in SP7.
- Seamlessly transfer between the bearers. From the list of prototype bearers that will be implemented in SANDRA, it can be seen that there is one bearer for each airspace type. A simulation will be made of a flight between these airspaces, and the SANDRA communications system will be shown to transfer between the respective airspace bearers in a seamless fashion.
The steps taken in SP4 to achieve these objectives are:
- Synthesize the architecture of the IMR.
- Identify the implications and advantages of the SANDRA communications system on future aircrafts’ avionics architectures.
- Establish and design link resource management functions.
- Identify and design the interfaces between the IMR building blocks.
- Establish processing requirements and specify a COTS processing platform and RTOS for use by the SANDRA IMR
- Implement the IMR for the 4 bearers and the resource management functionality
- Integrate and test the IMR sub-systems.
- Analyze the results of the programme and propose a definitive IMR solution for civil aircraft standardization.