home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Form U147-0794
- aerofws.TXT
-
- Ada Information Clearinghouse, 1-800/AdaIC-11, 703/685-1477
-
- "Our company won't stop investing in Ada since it provides us with the quality
- that no other language can provide" -- Jerome Verzat, Aerospatiale
-
- ADA USED FOR ON-BOARD FLIGHT CONTROL
-
- The Avionics and Systems division of the Aerospatiale, specialized in On-board
- electronics, has used the Alsys Ada environment to develop the Flight Warning
- System (FWS) of the Airbus A340.
-
- THE ADA APPLICATION
- The FWS monitors the various systems of the aircraft, detects failures and
- dangerous flight conditions and generates the corresponding warnings. It
- provides the crew with operational assistance for both the normal and abnormal
- aircraft system configurations. It does this through visual and aural
- attention getting devices and through the two ECAM display units by means of
- warning messages and system synoptic diagrams. The FWS comprises two captain
- lighted pushbuttons (Master Caution and Master Warning), two First Officer
- lighted pushbuttons (Master Caution and Master Warning) and ECAM Control Panel
- (ECP) enabling the crew to perform actions such as:
- * energizing and adjusting brightness of the ECAM displays units
- * manually presenting of system pages
- * recalling cleared warnings
- * clearing displayed messages and synoptic diagrams
- * testing take-off configuration
- * calling status pages
- Two computers, named Flight Warning Computers (FWC), send discrete data to
- lighted pushbuttons, audio data to the loudspeakers and warning messages to
- the warning and system display.
-
- ADA ADVANTAGES
- The Ada software performs the management and on screen composition of the
- various alarms. Originally chosen after a comparison with C and PL/M which
- proved that it provides the fastest execution speed to the application, Ada
- increasingly demonstrated its many other advantages during the development
- period. The engineering team was composed of ten people at the peak periods
- and developed 100,000 lines of code. Jerome Verzat, Project Manager, states,
- "Ada provides quality and safety by its intrinsic features, which makes the
- obtaining of certifications from official organizations much more easy than
- with other languages".
-
- Ada's strong typing detects errors more easily in both initial and separate
- unit compilations. At the same time, the use of package mechanisms enabled
- substantial increase gain of productivity within the development team,
- significantly cutting the costs of development with regard to previous
- applications. Referring to the longer term strategy, Jerome Verzat declares,
- "Investing in Ada guarantees the best enhancement of the software for a long
- term strategy because its modularity and portability assure both easy inside
- improvements with complete adaptability to new technologies".
-
-
- Based on a VAXstation, the application targets a proprietary CPU card with the
- Intel 80386 processor. The fact that the Alsys compiler is validated by
- official organizations was the key reason for its selection, because it
- answers the increasing requirements imposed by the certification tests.
-
- "Our FWS system for the Airbus A330 is about to be certified and our company
- won't stop investing in Ada since it provides us with the quality that no
- other language can provide", concludes Jerome Verzat. Moreover, he is now
- investigating the opportunity of taking advantage of the upcoming Ada9X
- real-time extensions in the development of new avionics projects.
-
- Thanks to Jerome Verzat from the Avionics and System Division of the
- Aerospatiale for presenting his experience with Alsys Ada.
-
-
-
- For further information, please contact:
-
- Marie-France Mignon and
- Florence Lescroart
- Alsys SA
- 29 Avenue Lucien RenQ Duchesne
- 78 170 La Celle-Saint-Cloud
- FRANCE
- Tel: + 33 30 78 17 17
- + 33 30 78 17 40
- + 33 30 78 17 48
- Fax: + 33 39 18 25 80
-
- Produced in cooperation with Ada Information Clearinghouse, Ada Software
- Alliance, and ACM SIGAda. Additional are available from the Ada Information
- Clearinghouse, at the address below.
-
- ***********************
-
- Copyright 1994. IIT Research Institute. All rights assigned to the U.S.
- Government (Ada Joint Program Office). Permission to reprint this flyer, in
- whole or in part, is granted provided the AdaIC is acknowledged as the source.
- If this flyer is reprinted as a part of a published document, please send the
- AdaIC a courtesy copy of the publication.
-
- Ada Information Clearinghouse (AdaIC)
- P.O. Box 46593
- Washington, DC 20050-6593
- 703/685-1477, 800/AdaIC-11, FAX 703/685-7019
- adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu; CompuServe 70312,3303
-
- The AdaIC is sponsored by the Ada Joint Program Office and operated by IIT
- Research Institute.
-
- The views, opinions, and findings contained in this report are those of the
- author(s) and should not be construed as an official Agency position, policy,
- or decision, unless so designated by other official documentation.
-
-