An Assessment of Real-Time Operating Systems For Use in Rotorcraft Mission Processing

The military has begun to embrace commercial standards for software as well as hardware. As hardware continues to advance in processing speed and larger memories, it is becoming easier to modify commercial operating systems to meet hard real-time processing requirements derivable from military aerospace applications. Rotorcraft mission processing represents a particularly challenging class of requirements against which to study the use of commercial real-time operating systems. As the DoD pursues transformation objectives, more challenging real-time requirements are expected to emerge. In addition, there are also architectural trends and design issues that directly relate to operating system functionality on rotorcraft. These requirements, trends, and issues provide a large number of background considerations leading to real-time operating system performance and functionality requirements for use on rotorcraft.