Open COTS solutions for avionics systems

The military and aerospace industry mandates rigorous technical and process requirements for safety-critical computing. In the U.S., these are expressed in the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) DO-178B standard that imposes requirements on the development and verification of airborne avionics systems (see Figure 1).

The targeted DO-178B certification level is either A - catastrophic; B - hazardous-severe; C - major; D - minor; or E - no effect. Until the formidable specifications of this standard are met, safety-critical computing systems literally never get off the ground. LynxOS-178 is a COTS operating system that fully satisfies the objectives of the DO-178B level A specification. LynxOS-178 delivers the security and real-time responsiveness needed for safety-critical systems and provides a low-risk path to DO-178B certification for developers to meet the technical requirements in the production of software for airborne systems.

The release of the LynxOS-178 DO-178B-compliant operating system adds support for ARINC-653 APplication/EXecutive (APEX) interface to meet the most stringent safety and reliability standards for military and commercial avionics systems. With the release 2.0 of LynxOS-178, LynuxWorks is providing a COTS operating system that delivers the security and real-time responsiveness needed for safety-critical systems, with a level of POSIX and ARINC-653 compliance previously unavailable in the avionics industry.

With full POSIX compliance, LynxOS-178 2.0 enables developers to take advantage of the time-to-market and investment-protection benefits of open standards-based development. The powerful formula of POSIX and ARINC-653 conformance with DO-178B certification will ensure application portability, software reuse and interoperability between embedded systems, as well as meet the most stringent requirements for real-time safety-critical applications.

With RSC certification, developers can significantly decrease time and cost of FAA DO-178 safety certification by reusing the artefacts for the operating system and related libraries. As a result, they can concentrate on the certification of the applications software and the hardware specific board support package (BSP) to dramatically reduce costs and time required for approval. Software reuse is quickly becoming a critical aspect in addressing the cost and quality of software systems (Figure 2).

The goal of software reuse is to leverage software data from previous development efforts to reduce time, cost, and risks of redevelopment efforts. With RSC certification for LynxOS-178, software reuse becomes a reality for safety-critical embedded systems for avionics systems. RSC certification for LynuxWorks' LynxOS-178 safety-critical RTOS offers embedded developers various benefits. Improved productivity is achieved by reducing time of software code development. Engineers can also gain improved system performance and reliability because reusable parts have been proven in other designs. Furthermore, utilising proven components enables them to reduce product schedule risks for quicker time-to-market. Finally, software reuse also enables software developers to focus on new software development rather than having to recertify software components, which will help reduce training time and costs.

Software reuse will fundamentally change the future of embedded software development. Reusable software offers developers tremendous benefits by controlling and reducing software cost and reducing schedule risk, while at the same time improvoving quality of their designs. The impact of RSC certification for LynxOS-178 will be significant for developers of aviation products, for example, as a means to reduce the costs and development times for new projects. RSC certification for LynxOS-178 will provide high payback, allowing developers to leverage software and artefacts that have been certified previously They can thus be confident that they will meet the standards widely accepted and adopted in the commercial avionics industry (Figure 3).