Avionics Software Development Research Articles

Computer Life-Cycle Management System for Avionics Software as a Tool for Supporting the Sustainable Development of Air Transport

The article presents selected results of analytical and design works undertaken at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in the field of building a computer support and software lifecycle management system that is critical for flight safety. The aim of the work undertaken is to develop methods and carry out verification and testing in order to detect errors in the developed avionics software for compliance with the requirements of the DO-178C standard and its production, certification, and implementation on board aircraft. The authors developed an original computer system within the implemented requirements used in the construction and certification of avionic onboard devices and their software (among others, DO-254, DO-178C, AQAP 2210, ARP 4761, ARP 4754A). The conducted analysis involved three basic groups of avionics software development processes, i.e., software planning, creation, and integration. Examples of solutions implemented in the constructed computer system were presented for each of these process groups. The theoretical basis of the new method for predicting vulnerabilities in the software implemented within integrated avionic systems using branching processes is discussed. It was demonstrated that the possibility of predicting vulnerabilities in future software versions could have a significant impact on assessing the risk associated with software safety in the course of its lifecycle. It was indicated that some of the existing quantitative models for analyzing software vulnerabilities were developed based on dedicated software data, which is why actual scenario implementation may be limited. DO-178C standard requirements for the process of developing avionics software were implemented in the helmet-mounted flight parameter display system constructed at AFIT. The requirements of the DO-178C and AQAP 2210 standards were shown to be met in the example of the software developed for a graphics computer, managing the operating modes of this system.

Verification and testing of safety-critical airborne systems: A model-based methodology

In this paper, we address the issues of safety-critical software verification and testing that are key requirements for achieving DO-178C and DO- 331 regulatory compliance for airborne systems. Formal verification and testing are considered two different activities within airborne standards and they belong to two different levels in the avionics software development cycle. The objective is to integrate model-based verification and model-based testing within a single framework and to capture the benefits of their cross-fertilization. This is achieved by proposing a new methodology for the verification and testing of parallel communicating agents based on formal models. In this work, properties are extracted from requirements and formally verified at the design level, while the verified properties are propagated to the implementation level and checked via testing. The contributions of this paper are a methodology that integrates verification and testing, formal verification of some safety critical software properties, and a testing method for Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC). The results of formal verification and testing can be used as evidence for avionics software certification.

A Real-Time Simulation Environment for Avionics Software Development and Qualification

A Real-Time Simulation Environment for Avionics Software Development and Qualification

Evaluation of static source code analyzers for avionics software development

This paper describes an evaluation of static source code analyzers. The purpose of the evaluation was to determine their adequacy for use in developing realtime embedded software for aviation electronics where the use of development tools and methods is controlled by a federal regulatory agency. It describes the motivation for the evaluation, results, and conclusions.

User experiences with the Aonix ObjectAda RAVEN

CMC Electronics Inc. has gained experience using the Ravenscar Profile by developing avionics software using the Aonix ObjectAda RAVEN toolset. The Aonix toolset was selected by CMC Electronics for several reasons including familiarity with the product family, the well-known IDE, the small kernel footprint, the claimed Ravenscar Profile compatibility (at the time of evaluation the only claimant) and the certifiability option. The Aonix toolset met all our criteria for an avionics software development toolset. From our development experience certain conclusions with respect to the Ravenscar Profile and Aonix toolset have been reached, which will be expressed herein.

Component based product line development of avionics software

Just as hardware integrated circuits, or components, can be used to inexpensively manufacture a product line of related hardware systems, reusable software components can be used to create software systems. This is accomplished by developing a common framework for a product line of related software systems that forms the component operating environment. A development architecture is presented based on our work using Object Oriented Analysis and Design techniques to create reusable software components that combine with aircraft specific customizations to form an avionics software system.

Creating reference architectures

ADAGE is a project to define and build a domain-specific software architecture (DSSA) environment for assisting the development of avionics software. A central concept of DSSA is the use of software system generators to implement component-based models of software synthesis in the target domain [SEI90]. In this paper, we present the ADAGE component-based model (or reference architecture) for avionics software synthesis. We explain the modeling procedures used, review our initial goals, show how component reuse is achieved, and examine what we were (and were not) able to accomplish. The contributions of our paper are the avionics reference architecture and the lessons that we learned; both may be beneficial to others in future modeling efforts.