Verification and validation of air traffic systems: Tactical separation assurance

The expected future increase in air traffic requires the development of innovative algorithms and software systems to automate safety critical functions such as separation assurance - the task of maintaining a safe distance between aircraft at all times. Extensive verification and validation (V&V) of such functions will be crucial for the acceptance of new air traffic management systems. This paper reports on work performed at the NASA Ames Research Center. We discuss how advanced V&V technologies can be used to create robust software prototypes for air traffic control software, and how conformance of production code with such prototypes can be assured. We present preliminary results of V&V efforts for a prototype of the Tactical Separation Assisted Flight Environment system (TSAFE).