On the Exploration of Model Based Support for DO 178C Compliant Avionics Software Development and Certification
Vital functions of avionics systems nowadays depend highly on software. Engineering such safety critical software is not straightforward as authorities impose stringent regulation like DO 178. Besides, the more functions the software has to provide, the more complex it becomes. Thus, effective engineering methods are required. In this context, DO 178C now considers contemporary software development techniques like Model Driven Engineering. In particular Model Driven Engineering has gained interest as a cost and time effective alternative reducing software development complexities by enabling reasoning at the model level. In this paper we present a review of a set of model based approaches to assess their support for software development and certification under DO 178C. We built a framework to characterize these approaches according with several criteria, specially coverage of DO 178C's required information for compliance. We analyze the approaches using this framework and highlight their commonalities, differences, strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, we identify open issues on which research may focus.
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)