Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Avionics Software Study

A trend has developed via the economics of software development to streamline process and products of organizations, increase their efficiency, and reduce overall software development costs. System development activities associated with Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, Inc. RTCA document Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification, DO-178B, can be expensive and, therefore, are the focus of efforts to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The motivation is even a bit beyond monetary resources as the scarcity of highly trained personnel that can develop such systems has also provided fuel to the attractiveness of considering reuse of commercial off-the-shelf COTS software. Software professionals have long envied the reuse model that has been established in the hardware arena. Hardware designs are easily fabricated from subassemblies and other components, although the firmware is affecting this arena also. Software designers have not been as effective in establishing their own reusability model. Nevertheless, software component reuse is still sought as a means for increasing software development productivity. More recently, the advent of object-oriented techniques has facilitated the development of such reusable code components. This report takes a snapshot of portions of industry domains related to safety. Avionics, nuclear, medical, space, and elevator domain information is surveyed. Key industry COTS components are identified and potential alternate methods for verifying a COTS components applicability to the avionics domain application are studied.