COMP 790-062: Avionics Software

Projects

Each student must complete a class project. You are responsible for defining your own project. Your project can be either an experimental investigation or a survey or research paper. Students are encouraged to take on projects that involve experimental efforts or proving new results (or both), but survey papers are OK. One approach for a survey paper would be to cover in greater depth a topic that we cover in class. Or you could cover something we're not covering.

It is perfectly fine to use research from an RA position as the basis for your class project. However, your project may not be based on work from another course without the permission of me and the instructor for that course (permission will be granted only if the total work involved is commensurate with the amount of effort expected in both courses combined). Also, your project must have some connection to avionics (and you should be able to explain what the connection is). Multi-person projects will be allowed, except for survey papers.

Project Proposals

You must have your project approved. The process is as follows.

1. Email me a one- or two-paragraph description of your proposed project.
2. If approved, go to step 3. Otherwise, go to step 1.
3. Write a short proposal (about 1-2 pages) that provides more detail. This document will serve as our "contract" for the project.
4. Conduct your research or implement your project.
5. Write a technical report (about 10 pages, though it may be longer) describing your research or project and the results you obtained.

Step 1 (approved) should be completed by October 15 (the last class before fall break). Step 3 should be completed by October 29. If possible, you should try to complete Step 3 earlier than this, as it leaves more time for getting all the work done. Your final report is due on December 8 (the last day of classes). Steve Goddard has put together a nice webpage on paper formats. Please have a look at this webpage before writing your proposal or final report. I'm quite picky about writing and will grade accordingly.

Projects Ideas

I encourage you to come up with your own project ideas. However, for those of you panicking because you cannot come up with a project idea, here are some projects you might consider.

• Spec out an avionics system like in the first paper we discussed, but a system that is more recent.
• Produce some new scheduling theory pertaining to multi-criticality systems.
• Re-consider such issues as synchronization and precedence constraints in an avionics setting (where security might be a concern, certification is a more exacting process, and simplifying assumptions like harmonic periods might be reasonable).
• Propose some strategies for implementing RTOSs in an avionics setting where multicore machines are used.
• Investigate the issue of overload control for avionics.
• Propose some strategies for ensuring security in networked UAV systems.
• Implement some of the mechanisms we discuss in LITMUS^RT and measure relevant overheads.
• Devise useful benchmark applications or task sets for testing real-time scheduling and synchronization approaches for avionics systems.