Towards a lightweight ARINC-653 research platform based on a nanokernel

Avionics systems rely on real-time operating systems (RTOSs) and require strict spatial and temporal isolation between applications in accordance with industry standards such as ARINC 653. However, very few open-source RTOSs currently comply with the ARINC 653 standard. This lack of accessible RTOSs and tools creates a significant barrier for academic and experimental research, particularly for studying system overhead and error propagation on modern multicore architectures, where proprietary solutions limit low-level analysis. This work presents the first step in adapting an open-source RTOS called ucx-os, which isa portable and lightweight nano-kernel, to the ARINC 653 standard. We incrementally implement core ARINC 653 par- tition management services, and then we validate compliance with unit tests on a virtualized processor (QEMU). This work provides a foundation for future experimental research on ARINC 653 RTOSs, bridging the limitations of development on proprietary solutions by enabling the use of an open-source kernel.