Cyber-physical integration in future aviation information systems

Advances in airframe and digital avionics during the last century have made the aircraft capable of superior flight and airspace systems incur zero accidents today. Future aircraft and the airspace systems, however, will increasingly rely on “cyber” advances, particularly, in network and information technologies. We envision that “cyber-physical” integration is central to the design and performance of these future aviation information systems. We propose a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) abstraction as a missing framework for future aviation information systems. In this paper, we consider the e-enabled aircraft and Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems as specific CPS instances. We apply our CPS framework to complex interactions between avionics, aircraft internal and external environment, airspace, and off-board systems. Furthermore, we propose a novel avionics-based CPS solution for controlling large volumes of air traffic using the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) and airborne networking in ATM. We discuss future challenges with introducing tight cyber-physical integrations in aircraft, including those from evolving dynamics and unpredictability of adverse conditions in cyberspace and physical world.

Introduction

Aviation is in a major transformation to meet predicted air traffic, societal, and business demands. Building on the digital avionics revolution, aviation today is deeply rooted in the digital age centered on “cyber,” both in aircraft and airspace systems. We define cyber as a highly intangible mix of software, computing, and networking, implemented to jointly perform functions. In this paper, we show how cyber and its tight integration with the physical world are essential to the prosperity of future aviation.