Abstract
RTCA DO-333, Formal Methods Supplement to DO-178C and DO-278A, provides guidance for software developers wishing to use formal methods in the certification of airborne systems and air traffic management systems. This paper presents three case studies describing the use of different classes of formal methods to satisfy DO-178C certification objectives. The case studies examine different aspects of a common avionics example, a dual-channel Flight Guidance System (FGS), which is representative of the issues encountered in actual developments. The three case studies illustrate the use of theorem proving, model checking, and abstract interpretation. Each of these techniques has strengths and weaknesses and each could be applied to different life cycle data items and different objectives than those described here. Our purpose is to illustrate a reasonable application of each of these techniques to produce the evidence needed to satisfy certification objectives in a realistic avionics application. We hope that these case studies will be useful to industry and government personnel in understanding formal methods and the benefits they can provide.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Dorobantu, A., Johnson, W., Lie, F.A.P., Murch, A., Paw, Y.C., Gebre-Egziabher, D., Balas, G.J.: An Airborne Experimental Test Platform: From Theory to Flight. In: Proceedings of the 2013 American Control Conference, Washington DC (June 2013)
Federal Aviation Administration, Joint Advisory Circular: Flight Guidance System Appraisal, AC/ACJ 25.1329 (2001)
Hagen, G., Tinelli, C.: Scaling up the formal verification of Lustre programs with SMT-based techniques. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD 2008), Portland, Oregon. IEEE (2008)
Halbwachs, N., Caspi, P., Raymond, P., Pilaud, D.: The Synchronous Dataflow Programming Language LUSTRE. In: Proceedings of the IEEE (1991)
Hurd, J.: Composable packages for higher order logic theories. In: Aderhold, M., Autexier, S., Mantel, H. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Verification Workshop, VERIFY 2010 (July 2010), http://gilith.com/research/papers
Miller, S.P., Whalen, M.W., Cofer, D.D.: Software Model Checking Takes Off. Communications of the ACM 33(2) (February 2010)
Norrish, M., Slind, K.: HOL-4 Manual (1998-2013), http://hol.sourceforge.net/.
Obua, S., Skalberg, S.: Importing HOL into isabelle/HOL. In: Furbach, U., Shankar, N. (eds.) IJCAR 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4130, pp. 298–302. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Owre, S., Shankar, N.: The Formal Semantics of PVS, NASA Technical Report CS-1999-209321 (May 1999)
RTCA DO-178C, Software Considerations in Airborne Software (December 2011)
RTCA DO-330, Software Tool Qualification Considerations (December 2011)
RTCA DO-333, Formal Methods Supplement to DO-178C and DO-278A (December 2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Cofer, D., Miller, S. (2014). DO-333 Certification Case Studies. In: Badger, J.M., Rozier, K.Y. (eds) NASA Formal Methods. NFM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8430. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06200-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06200-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06199-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06200-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)