Time-Triggered Ethernet Metamodel: Design and Application

The combination of the SAE Time Triggered Ethernet (TTEthernet) standard with the Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architectures supports the design, deployment and integration of mixed-critical avionic applications. In order to cope with the complexity of these tasks, we advocate for a model-driven engineering methodology. The key element of such methodology is the modeling language, which enables producing relevant models of the system. In this paper, we present a metamodel, which captures the main features and concepts defined in the SAE TTEthernet standard. We discuss how a combination of the TTEthernet metamodel with an IMA metamodel can be used to extend the AADL modeling language to model avionic applications deployed a TTEthernet-networked IMA platform. Finally, we present a case study to illustrate our approach.