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In modern aircraft power systems, active power converters are promising replacements for transformer rectifier units concerning efficiency and weight. To assess the benefits of active power converters, converter design and optimization should be carefully done under the operation requirements of aircraft applications: electromagnetic interference (EMI) standards, power quality standards, etc. Moreover, certain applications may have strict limits on other converter specifications: weight, size, converter loss, etc. This paper presents the methodology for performance optimization of different active power converters (active front-ends, isolated DC/DC converters and three-phase isolated converters) for aircraft applications. Key methods for power converter component (e.g. inductors, semiconductor devices, etc.) performance optimization and loss calculation are introduced along with the converter optimization procedure.

Multi core platforms offer high performance at low power and have been deemed as future of size, weight and power constrained applications like avionics safety critical applications. Multi core platforms are widely used in non-real time systems where the average case performance is desired like in consumer electronics, telecom domains. Despite these advantages, multi core platforms (hardware and software) pose significant certification challenges for safety critical applications and hence there has been limited usage in avionics and other safety critical applications. Many multicore platform solutions which can be certified to DO-254 & DO 178B Level A are commercially available. There is a need to evaluate these platforms w.r.t certification requirements before deploying them in the safety critical systems thereby reducing the program risks. This paper discusses the advantages of multi core platforms in terms of performance, power consumption and weight/size.

Automation on Validation and Verification (V&V) leveraging Formal Methods, and in particular Model Checking, is seeing an increasing use in the Aerospace domain. In recent years, Formal Methods have been used to verify systems and software and its correctness as a way to augment traditional methods relying on simulation and testing. Recent updates to the relevant Aerospace regulations (e.g. DO178C, DO331 and DO333) now have explicit provisions for utilization of models and formal methods. In a previous paper a compositional methodology for the verification of Aerospace Systems has been described with application to Electrical Power Generation and Distribution Systems. In this paper we present an expansion of the previous work in two directions. First, we describe the application of the methodology to the validation of Proximity Sensing Systems (PSS) requirements showing the effectiveness of the method to a new aerospace domain.