Open standards are needed for engineers to realize all the benefits from the digitalization of avionics testing. Distributed testing was initially developed to deal with the increasing complexity of aircraft avionics systems. When it became impossible to bench test them using a single computer the process had to be split on to multiple computers. Distributed testing enables the entire aircraft and its environment to be simulated in the test. The approach has several advantages over centralized testing which stem from the fact that the various parts of the system under test do not have to be at the same location. "With integration testing it's not always easy to connect equipment and parts of an aircraft together. They might be in different buildings, or different countries," says Christian Herbepin, avionics systems business director and technology adviser at United Electronic Industries. "In the past the solution was to duplicate the avionics system, which is costly and time-consuming."
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