The Challenge
Industrial radio remote controls, used for cranes, construction equipment, and material handling, have traditionally been built on proprietary hardware with vendor-locked firmware. Each product generation required a complete redesign when the radio module or MCU was discontinued. The lack of software portability meant manufacturers faced recurring certification costs and long development cycles. A client needed a certifiable radio control platform that could outlive individual hardware generations.
The Solution
Altirratech EU designed the IRRS (Industrial Radio Remote System), a portable software-defined radio platform built to DO-178C guidance from day one. The architecture separates application logic from hardware through three layers:
- Application Layer: All radio control logic: operator input processing, protocol framing, CRC validation, link health monitoring, and fail-safe state management. Fully platform-independent.
- Hardware Abstraction Layer: Portable interface contracts for ADC, GPIO, I2C, SPI, timers, and inter-core communication. Platform-specific adapters implement the actual hardware access without affecting application code.
- Platform Layer: RTOS, BSP, and vendor driver SDKs. Replaceable per target without touching the application or HAL.
The system operates on a dual-context execution model: a real-time core handles the 10 ms control loop and RF communication, while a separate management core handles HMI, logging, and battery monitoring.
Results
- Complete DO-178C artifact set: 10 system requirements, 26 software requirements, full architecture
- Platform-portable design: the same application code can target FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or bare metal
- Deterministic 10 ms control loop with <1 ms inter-core IPC latency
- Ready for HAL contract definition and reference platform implementation