The embedded market is seeing increased requirements for cost-effective, reliable avionics solutions that support safety-certifiability. To ensure that the electronic systems deployed on airborne platforms are designed and built to the required levels of performance and safety relative to their function, the FAA established the DO-254 Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware safety certification standard. On the software side, the DO-178C standard establishes guidelines for avionics software. These airworthiness regulations were originally created for the commercial aviation industry. As a result of the excellent reusability, cost, and safety successes they have delivered in the commercial sector, they have also been adopted by the defense industry, especially for use in military aircraft flying in domestic airspace. This trend is being driven by a number of market factors, including cockpit digitization, multi-core processing (enabling a reduction in the number of separate systems), the growing use of common avionics subsystems, the increasing number of UAVs and other military aircraft flying over civil population centers, and the use of synthetic vision systems (SVS) for landing (which impacts the design assurance levels required of mission computers).
Filed Under: Rapid prototyping