Allied Standards Avionics Architecture Council, or ASAAC, is an effort to define and validate a set of Open Architecture Standards for Avionics Architecture, particularly in the field of Integrated Modular Avionics.
ASAAC is managed by the UK Ministry of Defence, and many major European Avionics companies participate in the Working group, such as:
The Allied Standard Avionics Architecture Council (ASAAC) was established by the Air Senior National Representatives of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America with the intention of reducing procurement and support costs and improving technical and operational interoperability between NATO aircraft and aircraft weapons subsystems.[1]
This part of the programme was a feasibility study researching the possibilities of a Core Avionics Architecture Concept. It defined the main objectives of: Inter-changeability, Re-usability, Portability, Technology Transparency, Fault Tolerance, Extendability [sic], Maintainability[,] etc.
It also identified the concepts of the:
The ASAAC Phase II programme was sponsored by the Ministries of Defence of France, Germany, and the UK through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The French SPAé was the executive agency for the ASAAC programme and the Prime Contract was let to Dassault Thomson Avionique Modulaire (DTAM), a GIE type organisation under French company law formed on a 50-50 basis by Dassault and Thomson. The main aeronautic and electronics companies of France, Germany, and the UK took part in the ASAAC programme as sub-contractors of the DTAM GIE. The UK and German teams were the Industrial Avionics Working Group (IAWG), comprising GEC-Marconi, British Aerospace, and Smiths Industries Aerospace and Defense Systems; and the DASA ESG ASAAC Team (DEAT), comprising Daimler-Benz Aerospace Airbus and ESG Elektroniksystem-und Logistik-GmbH. Both teams had co-prime participant status in the programme with the DTAM. The contract was let on 18 November 1997.[2]
This was purely a paper based part of the programme in which the ASAAC Standards and Concepts were defined and documented in a series of reports.
This was the part of the programme where the concepts and standards defined in Phase II – Stage 1 were validated through a series of demonstrations using ASAAC standard software and hardware.
The current ASAAC standard has two parts:
ASAAC initially published provisional standards in five parts in January 2005:
All but Def Stan 00-74 were withdrawn in July 2007, the MOD and representatives from the Working group considering that it was the only standard bearing any influence.
Def Stan 00-74 is defined in the context of Integrated Modular Avionics. Software components are located on modules.[5]
The field covered by ASAAC in Def Stan 00-74 is similar to ARINC 653 (ARINC 653 is a software specification for space and time partitioning in avionics). However, there are differences between the two standards: Some features of ASAAC API, such as file handling, thread managing inside process, or debugging, are not considered in ARINC 653.
However, for the part where the two standards overlap, it is often possible to translate ASAAC interfaces in ARINC 653 API calls (and even in POSIX calls). Approximately 30% of the ASAAC API is covered directly by ARINC 653 and POSIX.[6]
For example, the following call defined in ASAAC: receiveBufferwould be translated in ARINC 653 by: RECEIVE_BUFFERand also in POSIX by: recv
STANAG 4626 is a NATO standardization of the requirements defined by the ASAAC program, proposed by the MOD and the ASAAC Working group.