Assurance Strategy for New Computing Platforms in Safety-Critical Avionics

• An assurance strategy for new computing platforms in safety-critical avionics has to be flexible and take into account different types of commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) hardware technologies. Completely new COTS technologies are already being introduced and successfully used in other domains. Good examples are heterogeneous platforms, hardware-based machine learning and approximate computing. Current avionics certification guidance material cannot cope with next generation of devices. We suggest using the generic assurance approach of the Overarching Properties (OPs) together with assurance cases to argument that COTS assurance objectives are met and to achieve the flexibility required for future computing platforms. We introduce a novel assurance cased-based OP approach in [1] and refine the work into a framework in [2]. Within this framework we are able to integrate COTS technology specific assurance objectives using a five-step process. In this paper, we show through some representative examples of emerging computing platforms that our strategy is a way forward for new platforms in safety-critical avionics.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Datorsystem (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Computer Systems (hsv//eng)

Keyword

safety-critical avionics

assurance strategy

assurance case

COTS assurance

Overarching Properties

computing platforms

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)