Software certification of safety-critical avionic systems: DO-178C and its impacts

This article presents an overview of the new guidelines for safety-critical airborne software contained in DO-178C and supplementary documents. The similarity between DO178B and DO-178C is presented by reviewing the basics of DO178 verification philosophy, and an overview of the major new guidance in DO-178C is presented to highlight what has been changed, along with a description of the impact of DO-178C on the industry. The remaining sections of the article provide a discussion of the new guidelines in the supplementary documents: DO-330 to DO-333.