Aviation Certification of Avionics Software: Minimizing Costs, Time and Risks

Avionics is undergoing a transformation, bringing new technologies, opportunities, and markets into play. These changes result in new functions, largely implemented through embedded software. Looking ahead, the focus must be on safety, security, and aircraft certification.

Typically, decisions about tools for the development and verification of software were in the hands of individual development and assurance teams. However, given today's complex regulatory environment and short market timeframes, decisions are increasingly being made at the enterprise level. Initiatives aimed at reducing the cost, time, and risks of certification have therefore become essential activities for executives.

Consider new aspects and technologies

In the field of aviation, there are new technologies and aspects that are crucial for decisions in software development and verification. These include:

• Increasing control of autonomous systems.
• With the market introduction of autonomous aircraft, companies employing proven software development and testing processes will be better prepared for potential certification hurdles and can maintain their early-mover advantage.
• Significant increase in small aircraft, such as eVTOLs and drones.
• Pioneers will rely on a flexible, scalable design concept that helps them adapt to changing requirements while using proven commercial design practices to meet these requirements with less risk and cost.
• Impact of sustainability and zero emissions on design.
• As regulations and technologies evolve to reduce aircraft emissions and promote electrification, existing standards and automated development and verification tools can provide a solid foundation to help mitigate the risks associated with complex new technologies.
• New attack vectors through increased connectivity.
• While an earlier integration ensures that, in addition to flight safety, security aspects are considered during the design phase, connectivity demands the ability to quickly respond to vulnerabilities that only emerge in the field. Automated verification tools combined with requirement traceability tools can isolate changes and perform automatic regression on the affected functionality.

Overcoming certification challenges

The verification of software can require just as much time, effort, and resources as all planning and development processes combined. Testing and verification therefore become costly activities. Moreover, verification is becoming increasingly demanding as compliance requirements continually grow in complexity and scope. It is no longer an option to tackle these challenges and this complexity without integrated, automated tools. To reduce the time required for development and certification, different groups must be given the opportunity to work cooperatively and in parallel while utilizing an integrated development and verification toolchain.

The complete software development lifecycle should be covered by a holistic concept to ensure effective communication and knowledge transfer across all phases. Transitioning to an integrated package of automated software development and verification tools can have a significant impact in this regard. This is especially true for decentralized and geographically dispersed teams that need to consolidate information during development and testing processes. Manual procedures or isolated tools would undermine efficiency and lead to the introduction of errors and vulnerabilities.

Lower costs through integrated tools

In contrast to spreadsheets and standalone document management systems, integrated tools ensure comprehensive transparency and impact analyses across projects and teams. This enables faster and better decision-making. An ideal combination of verification tools offers a wide range of capabilities, such as requirements traceability, impact analyses, test management, compliance with coding standards, code quality checks, code coverage analysis, data and control flow analysis, unit, integration, and system testing, as well as the automated generation of certification evidence.

Such tools are suitable for any software development lifecycle models. Furthermore, verification tools are an essential component of the CI (Continuous Integration) workflow. Teams can therefore work with the same tools throughout the entire development process, enabling the development, verification, and deployment of software to proceed quickly and iteratively. Using the CI concept, developers can perform static analyses and unit tests as part of their front-end verification to ensure, even before merging with other codebases, that the code delivers the intended functionality.

Earlier scheduling minimizes security vulnerabilities

The topic of cybersecurity has always been a moving target in the field of avionics systems, with serious implications for functional safety, making it a significant source of business risks and uncertainties. The recommended strategy here is to incorporate the security aspect directly into the design to minimize vulnerabilities during development. Subsequent testing of the completed software helps demonstrate the effectiveness of this concept before the product goes into operation. Once it does, a strategy becomes important to quickly and securely address newly emerging vulnerabilities.

To address this challenge, many teams rely on an integrated DevSecOps concept to reduce costs and improve efficiency. While it was traditionally common to hand over the completed software to security teams, this earlier integration allows software development and security teams to work efficiently and cost-effectively in parallel. Flexible and customizable software tools can easily adapt to the respective risk level and the required rigor of risk mitigation, while requirements traceability tools enable rapid responses to vulnerabilities even in systems that have not been updated for years.

Develop aircraft software efficiently

Problems should be solved and fundamental changes made as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for the launch of the next critical product. Equipped with a comprehensive package of verification tools, teams are well-supported with documentation and shared knowledge throughout the entire product development lifecycle. These new areas of avionics demand complex development and regular collaboration. By using integrated tools, teams are enabled to efficiently develop, verify, and certify new aircraft software.
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