AVIAGE SYSTEMS
Elevating the Future of Flights through Open Architecture Avionics

The next generation of aircrafts is striving to become more efficient and connected. Meanwhile, with some of the recent, yet big mishaps in the aviation history--including the disappearance of flight MH370— the industry's attention has come towards increasing safety, security, and connectivity, whilst reducing the size, weight, and power (SWaP) of aircrafts. “Achieving this requires a truly open architecture IMA (Integrated Modular Avionics), which allows more hardware or software systems to become connected, with security and speed,” says Alan Jones, President and CEO of AVIAGE SYSTEMS.The company’s solutions in the IMA space allow hardware reduction in the aircraft by combining systems software to the Common Core Computing systems, which will effectively lead to SWaP reductions.

Our baseline offering is a truly an open architecture IMA which allows more and more hardware or software systems to become connected with security and speed

The journey of AVIAGE SYSTEMS started in 2012 as an international Tier-1 civil avionics solution provider, headquartered at Shanghai, China. Established as a 50/50 joint venture between GE and Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the company innovates and brings laudable high-value solutions and services to the aerospace industry in fully integrated, open architecture avionics for commercial aircrafts. “We took the great opportunity of China’s aviation industry development to provide avionics system solutions for C919 aircraft program of China’s Commercial Aircraft Corporation (COMAC),” remarks Jones.

Security is an imperative aspect when it comes to ameliorating avionics and other airborne network systems.

“Cisco’s 2015 Annual Security Report listed aviation among the top five high risk industry verticals, affecting OEMs with regards to the protection of their data as well as intellectual property,” states Jones.AVIAGE SYSTEMS is committed to cyber security.With a holistic approach, AVIAGE SYSTEMS addresses the security concerns from a three-fold perspective—organization, process, and technical. “We are cultivating a security centric company culture by implementing ISO/IEC 27001:2013 framework,” claims Jones.The security basics, such as DLP, patching, and implementing critical security controls are covered under the technical framework. AVIAGE SYSTEMS is also establishing a 24X7 security monitoring system to cover their operations in China, US, and France.

AVIAGE SYSTEMS’ partnership with COMAC on the C919 aircraft has allowed them to integrate more aircraft functionalities onto IMA. With IMA as a generic processing platform, the company is allowing air framers to host software that resides in separate systems. With certification of the avionics system, AVIAGE SYSTEMS also conducts safety analyses and testing to prove their standards to FAA, EASA or CAAC that their systems are safe, reliable, and meets aircraft requirements, through their integration labs.In an implementation highlight, AVIAGE SYSTEMS provided SIVB (System Integration & Verification Bench) to COMAC to conduct the tier 1 system integration onto their system. AVIAGE also helped COMAC in meeting the avionics level requirements at the systems level to help build up their integration capability.

With a strong management from both AVIC and GE, AVIAGE SYSTEMS relies heavily on the experience of the leaders to bring insight and expertise in order to build capability and efficiency into their business processes and culture. To leverage this to maximum potential, they have set up R&D centers in Shanghai, Phoenix, and Toulouse to innovate with industry leading civil avionics solutions. At present, AVIAGE SYSTEMS is on the process of expanding their global footprint to U.S.and France. In the development phase, the company is moving towards incorporating Big Data analytics or the industrial internet. “We are working with GE, AVIC, and COMAC to utilize this technology on the newest aircraft,” concludes Jones.