Methods for Avionics Systems to Support Third Party Development

Today's modern aircraft are built with highly integrated avionics solutions that provide pilots enhanced situational awareness and reduced workload. This paper researches how highly integrated avionics can be architected in a way to simplify modification and augmentation of avionics systems with new features developed by third parties (in addition to the original avionics provider). Our objective is to determine the best technical solution(s) to enhancing avionics system architectures to support third party development. We reviewed technical solutions to enable third party integration, including Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™), ARINC 661, video input, table driven user interfaces, and application co-hosting. We found that a system implementing all of these solutions concurrently offers maximum flexibility, but a system that, at a minimum, implements FACE and ARINC 661 is an efficient way to enhance an avionics system to support Third Party Development.