DO-178B Level A Certification

DO-178B is the safety critical standard for developing avionics software systems jointly developed by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) safety critical working group RTCA SC-167 and the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment EUROCAE WG-12.

The purpose of D0-178B is to provide guidelines for the production of software for airborne systems and equipment that performs its intended function with a level of confidence in safety that complies with airworthiness. The guidelines are in the form of:Objectives for software life cycle processes.

• Descriptions of activities and design considerations for achieving those objectives.
• Descriptions of the evidence that indicate that the objectives have been satisfied.

DO-178B discusses those aspects of airworthiness certification that pertain to the production of software for airborne systems and equipment used on aircraft or engines.

DO-178B then defines specific levels of safety criticality, from highest to lowest. These are:

Level A - Catastrophic: prevent continued safe flight or landing
Level B - Hazardous/Severe-Major: potential fatal injuries to a small number of occupants
Level C - Major: impairs crew efficiency, discomfort or possible injuries to occupants
Level D - Minor: reduced aircraft safety margins, but well within crew capabilities
Level E - No Effect: does not effect the safety of the aircraft at all

The DO-178B Level A compliant Software Life-Cycle Data Package for INTEGRITY-178B includes the following artifacts that are developed, verified and supported directly by Green Hills Software's in-house team of experts throughout a customer's DO-178B certification activity. Unlike other RTOS suppliers, Green Hills Software does NOT farm out the development, verification and support of it's RTOS certification artifacts to a secondary supplier, thus eliminating the responsibility of a successful DO-178B certification from the developer of the RTOS.

• Customer specific Plan for Software Aspects of Certification (PSAC)
• Software Development Plan
• Software Verification Plan
• Software Configuration Management Plan
• Software Quality Assurance Plan
• Software Requirements Standards
• Software Design Standards
• Software Code Standards
• Source Code to applicable tested software
• Executable Code to applicable tested software
• Software Design Document
• Software Requirements Specification
• Software Verification Test Cases and Procedures
• Software Verification Results
• Software Life Cycle Environment Configuration Index
• Software Configuration Index
• Problem Reports
• Software Configuration Management Records
• Software Quality Assurance Records
• Traceability Matrices
• Tool Accomplishment Summary
• Software Accomplishment Summary (SAS)

The certification package includes Green Hills Software services for all DO-178B Level A compliant verification activities for INTEGRITY-178B operating on processor architecture specified by a customer's requirements. All reviews, analysis and testing of the INTEGRITY-178B real-time operating system is performed by Green Hills Software using the customer's target processor system.