Advanced Verification Techniques for Airborne Safety Critical Hardware

RTCA/DO-254 defines the verification process used to assure that the designed hardware meets the requirements and identifies additional verification processes that should be performed for DAL A hardware where failure could result in the loss of the aircraft. While RTCA/DO-254 identifies potential verification methods, it does not define any criteria to determine when the verification process is sufficient or complete. This work compares the DO-254 verification process to what is used in other industries and identifies advanced verification coverage methods and applicable coverage metrics suitable for use on safetycritical hardware. The verification methods considered include requirements based verification, functional verifications, constrained-random verification and formal methods. The suitability of various coverage metrics to assess the verification completeness are discussed and a robust verification flow is defined.