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February 26, 1:52 EST
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Officials at Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics recently selected the Qualifiable Code Generator (QCG) software development tool from Engenuity Technologies in Montreal, in an effort to certify future military avionics applications under the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) RTCA DO-178B regulations.
Software deployed in both military and commercial aircraft today requires 100 percent reliability for the sake of the passengers' and crew members' lives that depend on the error-free functionality, Engenuity Technologies officials say. The FAA has published stringent guidelines on how qualifiable development software is to be developed, verified, and certified by such companies, company officials say.
DO-178B -- and its counterpart ED-12B in Europe -- was developed through the cooperative efforts of RTCA (the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics) and the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE). DO-178B provides guidelines for the software development process yet is not a development standard or process document. Software developers may use any development methodology as long as the criteria in DO-178B are satisfied in the areas of planning, software development (requirements definition, design, code, integration, and verification), configuration management, and quality assurance.
DO-178B recognizes that different applications and systems have different potential for failure. Accordingly, five software levels (A through E) have been defined for the effort required to show certification compliance in accordance with the different hazard classifications. The effort required for each level is on a sliding scale with the Level A, the most safety-critical, requiring the most scrutiny and Level E, the least critical, requiring the least scrutiny. As defined in DO-178B, failure or anomalous behavior of Level A software could have a catastrophic effect for an aircraft, while Level B is for software that could have a hazardous or severe-major effect. Levels C and D have to do with major and minor effects, respectively, and Level E with software that would have no effect.
Engenuity Technology officials claim that their QCG software is the first embedded graphics development tool in the world to be produced under RTCA DO-178B regulations and delivered as a qualifiable development tool. The software - provides a solution to meet these requirements and significantly reduces the time and cost involved to develop software applications, company officials claim.
The QCG is an enhanced code generation tool to be used in conjunction with its existing VAPS tools, Engenuity officials say. It also includes a certification kit that includes all of the necessary data from the tool's development cycle to enable the tool to be qualifiable on a given application, company officials say.
For more information on QCG and Engenuity Technologies contact the company on the World Wide Web at http://www.engenuitytech.com.
Military & Aerospace Electronics
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