Avionics Certification: A Complete Guide to DO-178 (Software), DO-254 (Hardware)

This book explains the most critical safety certification required by commercial and military aircraft. The authors describe each step in creating and submitting formal documents for government approval. Their advice is highly practical, acquired over 20 years of performing successful certifications now flying aboard every major airliner and many military aircraft. The book includes dozens of real-life anecdotes to show where applicants go wrong, fall victim to common myths and waste time with misconceptions. The authors approach avoids the abstract by delivering clear advice on such practical matters as budgets, staff members, tools, programming languages and schedules. They give numerous rules-of-thumb for guiding the reader along what can otherwise be an arduous path to certification. Although the book deals with each milestone of a program, the authors point out, We don t teach regulations, but how to think like the FAA! That approach has worked for scores of companies, helping avoid damaging overruns in budgets and schedules. As DO-178 (software) and DO-254 (hardware) certification become established in aviation, they are spreading to other industries, such transportation, medical instruments and power generation. As in aviation, these technologies are now in the digital world, and need to meet high standards of safe operation demanded for aircraft. Increasingly, these other industries are required to meet DO-178/254 certification. As the authors explain, the official DO-178 and DO-254 documents are not only vague and non-specific, but have to be! The reason is, they need to apply to a wide range of systems. The authors meet the challenge by skillfully interpreting the intent of the documents. They have been doing it for years in world-wide seminars that have trained more people than all other seminars combined. Their book is the first text on this critical subject. Contents of "Avionics Certification" 1. Introduction 2. Real World of DO-178B 3. Planning the Project 4. Criticality Levels 5. What is Certified ? 6. Cost Vs Benefits 7. Military Certification 8. Getting Started 9. Safety Assessment 10. Planning, Development and Correctness 11. Quality Assurance Plan 12. Configuration Management 13. Software Development Plan 14. System Requirements| 15. Software Design 16. Unit Testing 17. Software Testing 18. Structural Coverag 19. Test and Tools 20. DO-254 (Hardware) 21. Hardware Design Life Cycle 22. Gap Analysis 23. Verification 24. Project Organization 25. PSAC 26. Tool Qualification 27. Software Design Aspects 28. Cost Estimation and Metrics Glossary

Vance Hilderman spent 25 years designing and testing over 150 aerospace systems. He holds BSEE and MBA degrees, and a computer engineering MS from the Univ. of So. California. He founded the world's largest avionics software organization and completed several hundred programs for 50 major avionics companies. Tony Baghai has over 20 years' experience in software certification. He holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Aeronautical Engineering. He was one of the youngest Designated Engineering Representatives ever to earn FAA certification for Systems and Level A software