Interconnected and Data-Driven Aircraft Cabin Systems: Consistent Integration of ARINC 853 Messaging Standard into Model-Based Aircraft Systems Development

Increasing digitalization of the aircraft cabin, driven by the need for improved operational efficiency and an enhanced passenger experience, has led to the development of data-driven services. In order to implement these services, information from different systems is often required, which leads to a multi-system architecture. When designing a network that interconnects these systems, it is important to consider the heterogeneous device and supplier landscape as well as variations in the network architecture resulting from airline customization or cabin upgrades. The novel ARINC 853 Cabin Secure Media-Independent Messaging (CSMIM) standard addresses this challenge by specifying a communication protocol that relies on a data model to encode provided and consumed information. This paper presents an approach to integrate CSMIM-specific communication concepts into a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) framework using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML). This enables a streamlined model-based method to design and implement aircraft cabin systems interconnected through a CSMIM-based communication network as well as to create airline-customized configurations. Based on the Cabin Data and Communication Modeling Language (CDACML), a SysML mean to link system interfaces with the CSMIM data model across multiple development levels is proposed. Multiple development levels as part of the left side of the widely-accepted V-model are supported to enable a model-based handover into the system level, for example, reducing the risk for interface inconsistencies. The link to the CSMIM data model is designed such that it can be used to extract system interface definitions for implementation activities through Model-to-Text (M2T) transformations. To show the validity of the approach, a smart aircraft seat occupancy detection use case is designed using the proposed approach as part of the activities of the left side of the V-model including the development of a prototype CSMIM communication module. The communication module is then deployed on networked hardware that is configured through a M2T transformation and which is technically realizing this use case.