This Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) addresses safety and economic issues for Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA), which are spreading across new aircraft and which group, in lesser volume, functions common to different avionics. These functions span from rack housing to processing and data storage resources, as well as power supplies and interfaces.
The proposed ETSO-2C153 is different from the corresponding FAA TSO-153, since the latter does not contain minimum performance specifications for the various IMA modules.
The specific objective of the IMA Integrated Rulemaking Project is to ensure a cost-efficient and transparent certification process for IMA by:
- offering to IMA manufacturers the possibility to obtain ETSO authorisations at platform/ module level, independent of aircraft (this NPA);
- offering to integrators of aircraft functions on already authorised IMA platforms the possibility to obtain ETSO authorisations, independent of aircraft (RMT.0621 which would propose an amendment to CS-ETSO Subpart A); and
- providing public guidance for incremental certification of IMA, starting with platform modules and culminating in their installation on aircraft, so covering all connected aspects (e.g. impact on Master Minimum Equipment List (MMEL)). To achieve this, RMT.0622, whose NPA is under development will propose the new AMC 20-170.
This NPA hence proposes to introduce a new ETSO-2C153 into Index 2 (i.e. significantly different from corresponding FAA provisions) of CS-ETSO.
