Development of Fault Tolerance Analysis for Flight Critical Avionics Systems

The objectives of this Phase I research are: 1. development of a set of metrics with both qualitative and quantitative attributes for evaluating capabilities of dependability modeling and simulation tools, 2. evaluation of representative dependability modeling and simulation tools in terms of the developed metrics by both analytical and experimental approaches, 3. Identification of essential features in modeling military fault tolerant computing systems and for commercialization, and demonstration of a theoretical basis for modifying existing tools or developing new tools with a potential for commercialization and for integration with a performance modeling tool. Two approaches will be used in the evaluation: analytical evaluation, mostly based on the user's manual, and experimental evaluation by execution of the tool. In the experimental evaluation, the representative tools will be used to model actual fault tolerant systems. The results of this Phase I research will be a high- level design for modifying selected existing tools or developing new tools. The design will form the basis for the Phase II development of tools that are suitable for both modeling military fault tolerant systems and commercialization.