Ensuring Safety of Avionics Software at the Architecture Design Level: An Industrial Case Study

Ensuring that avionics software meets safety requirements at each development stage is very important to warrant the safe operation of an avionics system. Many safety requirements are imposed by various standards and industrial regulations that must be met by avionics software. One of such standards is DO-178B/C, which provides guidelines (e.g. development process and the objectives to satisfy in development activities) for meeting the safety requirements. This paper presents a modeling methodology including a UML profile for specifying safety requirements on a component-based architecture model and a set of design guidelines on avionics software. These safety requirements were identified from both standards (mainly DO-178B/C) and current engineering practices in the domain of avionics system. The methodology enforces safety requirements automatically. We have applied the methodology on an industrial autopilot system and several previously uncaught faults were revealed.