Airborne electronic hardware and software, from aircraft and system requirements, the safety assessment and the assignment of development assurance levels, through certification plans, requirements, design, implementation and verification to the objectives of DO-254 and DO-178C, environmental qualification and the final compliance review, to production under AS9100 with first article inspection and continued airworthiness, change impact analysis and obsolescence management until end of support.
Avionics and airborne electronics lifecycle: 11 stages, 12 gates of its own and 2 hand-offs to the Product lifecycle, from Aircraft and System Requirements to Continued Airworthiness and End of Support.
11 stages, 12 gates of its own and 2 hand-offs to the Product lifecycle, 3 of the gates technical readiness reviews (TR). Each stop opens its stage; each sign opens its gate. Point at a stop or tab to it to read what the stage is for. What the codes mean
In collaboration with The Digital Electronics Blog (opens in a new tab)
A dashed sign with a TR tag is a technical readiness review gate.
An outlined sign with an arrow is a hand-off: the gate is owned by the Product lifecycle, where this lifecycle hands its work on.
In collaboration with The Digital Electronics Blog (opens in a new tab)
Turning the aircraft or system need into allocated requirements for the electronic equipment: the functions it performs, the failure conditions those functions can contribute to, the functional hazard assessment and preliminary system safety assessment that classify them, and the development assurance level each hardware and software item must be developed to, following the development assurance practice of ARP4754B and the safety assessment methods of ARP4761A (or the earlier editions where the certification basis still names them).
Program launch gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Concept approval)Assurance levels assigned gate
Writing and agreeing the plans that say how the hardware and software will meet the objectives of DO-254 and DO-178C at the assigned levels: the Plan for Hardware Aspects of Certification, the Plan for Software Aspects of Certification, the development, validation, verification, configuration management and process assurance plans, the standards, the tool qualification approach and the component management plan, ending with the first review with the certification authority.
An outlined sign with an arrow is a hand-off: the gate is owned by the Product lifecycle, where this lifecycle hands its work on.
Capturing the hardware requirements for each programmable device, ASIC and circuit board and the software high-level requirements, each traced up to the allocated system requirements, with derived requirements identified and returned to the safety assessment, and validated as correct and complete before design commits to them.
Choosing the hardware architecture, device technology and component set, and the software architecture with its partitioning, scheduling and interfaces, so that the design meets the requirements, the safety assessment's independence and fault tolerance assumptions hold, and the parts can be supported for the life of the aircraft.
Producing the detailed hardware design, such as hardware description language code, constraints, schematics and board layout, and the software low-level requirements and source code, to the agreed design and coding standards, with reviews that keep every design element traced to a requirement.
Turning the design into hardware items and executable software: synthesis, place and route and the programming file for programmable devices, fabrication for an ASIC, board build, compilation and linking of the software, and integration of software on the target hardware, all from controlled configurations with qualified or assessed tools.
Showing that the hardware and software meet their requirements and nothing more: requirements-based tests on the target, reviews and analyses, robustness testing, structural coverage analysis for software, elemental analysis or another advanced method for the most critical hardware, with the independence the assurance level calls for, and closure of the system safety assessment.
Qualifying the equipment for the environment it will fly in, using test procedures such as those in RTCA DO-160 for temperature, altitude, vibration, power input, lightning and electromagnetic compatibility, together with component derating, reliability prediction and the evidence the equipment specification and any technical standard order call for.
Bringing the evidence together for the certification authority and the aircraft or system integrator: the hardware and software accomplishment summaries, the configuration indexes, conformity of the item to its data, resolution of open problem reports, and the final review that closes the compliance findings.
Building the equipment in a quality system that meets AS9100, with first article inspection to AS9102, production test, counterfeit parts avoidance and supplier control, so that every unit conforms to the approved design data, and obtaining the production approval or the integrator's acceptance of the production line.
Supporting the equipment in service for the life of the aircraft: in-service problem reporting and safety assessment of each issue, change impact analysis and re-verification for every hardware or software change, component obsolescence management, and, at the end, the last-time buy, repair support and records kept for as long as the aircraft fly.
End of support gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (End of support)
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