Adopting software product line principles to manage software variants in a complex avionics system

  • Authors:
  • Frank Dordowsky;Walter Hipp

  • Affiliations:
  • ESG Elektroniksystem- und Logistik-GmbH;Eurocopter Deutschland GmbH

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 13th International Software Product Line Conference
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Eurocopter is the majority partner in NH Industries, the international consortium that develops and produces the medium weight multi-role helicopter NH90. AgustaWestland and Stork Fokker are additional partners. The NH90 has been successfully sold to 14 nations and their armed forces. The software division at Eurocopter Germany develops the on-board software for three computers of the NH90 avionics CORE and MISSION Systems. The growing number of customers and their specific application domains for the NH90 has led to an increasing number of functionally different helicopter variants. Moreover, during the long development time that is typical for complex military avionics projects, the computing technology has changed considerably over time so that the current operational software has to fit to several processor architectures. In order to cope with the high number of software variants and technology variations, the NH90 software team developed concepts and strategies for SW architecture and tool modifications based on Software Product Line (SPL) principles.