Patent Document ID: 8423331
Application ID: 12781276
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A computer-assisted method for for optimization of an aircraft's avionics platform, said method comprising: associating functional link instances with paths intended to implement the functional link instances, using a first set of constraints, the functional link instances exchanging messages between software module instances, the software module instances being associated with one of a plurality of avionics functions of the platform, the platform additionally including a plurality of equipment items linked together by unidirectional or bidirectional physical links which belong to different types of networks, paths used to link said plurality of equipment items, where each path is made up either of a single direct physical link between a source equipment item and a destination equipment item, or of a first physical link between said source equipment item and a first network node, a second physical link between said destination equipment item and a second network node, and a network path between said first and second nodes; associating software modules instances with at least one of the plurality of equipment items intended to host the software modules instances, using a second set of constraints, where said constraints of the first and the second sets are formulated as linear inequalities of decision variables; generating a third set of constraints formulated as linear inequalities of decision variables, the third set of constraints constraining instances of functional links to be segregated using sets of network paths that are disjoint, the third set of constraints including linear inequalities constraining a number of network paths between the source equipment item and the destination equipment item passing through a specific node to be less than a specific number; minimizing a plurality of cost functions, each cost function being formulated as a linear combination of at least certain of said decision variables in order to obtain at least one optimum solution for the implementation of the avionics functions in the platform; and implementing the plurality of avionics functions in the platform according to the optimum solution such that the software module instances are implemented on the plurality of equipment items and functional links are implemented on paths included in the at least one optimum solution.