Professional Articles

In the second of a two-part article, we continue our look at DO-178C, and the efforts behind compliance at every stage.

As was discussed in our previous article (‘Making Do with safety Standards’, Aerospace Innovations Q3 October) DO-178C was introduced to address several deficiencies and ambiguities in DO-178B. The revision primarily sought to enhance clarity, reflect modern software engineering practices, and provide better guidance on using advanced technologies without increasing the…

In the first of a two-part article, we look at the evolution of DO-178C and its influence on safety critical software

In 2023, Patrica Lustiq and Gill Ringland proposed the concept of Fractured Backbones. A backbone is an agreed set of rules which are shared and support the way that things work.

As our towns and cities get busier, existing transport networks are becoming more congested. We’ve all seen ambulances struggling to get through gridlocked streets, or being late for appointments as a result of traffic. This is why those responsible for urban mobility are looking for smarter ways of moving people and goods around, particularly in situations where every second counts.

Hybride System-on-Chips integrieren zunehmend heterogene Prozessoren. Entwickler sehen sie jedoch als eine Komponente an, die sie möglichst integriert entwickeln wollen. Ein homogenes RTOS- und Hypervisor-Ökosystem für sowohl MPU- als auch MMU-gestützte Prozessoren bietet den entscheidenden Komfortgewinn.

The certification of the functional safety of a system is complex. All the manufacturers involved have to contribute to comply with standards - from the hardware with its BSPs and drivers, through the hypervisor and operating system, to the application code of the OEM and third-party supplier. The operating system, which is optimized specifically for the hardware, and the hypervisor used in mixed-critical systems have a key function here - lying between the hardware and the application. If this…

Information security is one of the most important topics of our time. One thing is certain: There will always be attackers who try to exploit gaps in software to abuse it. We are currently experiencing a rapid increase in the number of cyberattacks. Malicious actors – generally professionalized criminals or state attackers – are out to obtain confidential information, gain access to systems in order to control them, or damage them to such an extent that they are no longer operational.

Hybrid system-on-chips increasingly integrate heterogeneous processors. However, developers see them as one component that they want to develop as integrated as possible. A homogeneous RTOS and hypervisor ecosystem for both MPU- and MMU-supported processors provides the critical convenience gain.

When developing embedded systems that are to be real-time capable, one of the first and most important questions is whether the applications should run under a real-time operating system (RTOS) or whether a bare-metal solution should be developed. Bare-metal programming is generally understood to mean that an application is written directly on the hardware without using an external programming interface, i.e. an operating system. Applications access here directly hardware registers of…

Development of certifiable systems and software for European Space Applications requires strict adherence to the ECSS standards. ECSS - the European Cooperation for Space Standardization - is a cooperation of the European Space Agency (ESA), national space agencies and the European Industry Association Eurospace with the aim of developing and maintaining coherent, commercially oriented and user-friendly standards for space applications. The main intention is to improve the performance and…

When people think of satellite-based GPS, they envision a high-tech satellite navigation system that can pinpoint locations worldwide to within a few meters. But global navigation systems (GNSS) such as the American GPS or the European Galileo struggle with many environmental interferences. So-called satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) improve the performance of these navigation systems by correcting their data. From 2022, the Korean peninsula will also benefit from the PikeOS-based SBAS…

In many applications in the railways, aircraft or automotive industry the interaction between safety and security is of particular importance, since there are many dependencies between them and they can therefore no longer be considered separately.

In modern aircrafts, more and more functions traditionally implemented as Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) will be hosted by Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) modules. At the same time new aircraft programs will require new safety functions, information services and comfort features which will also increase the demand for processing performance of IMA modules.