On the Exploration of Model-Based Support for DO-178C-Compliant Avionics Software Development and Certification

Vital functions of avionics systems nowadays depend highly on software. Engineering such safety-critical software is not straightforward as authorities impose stringent regulation like DO-178. Besides, the more functions the software has to provide, the more complex it becomes. Thus, effective engineering methods are required. In this context, DO-178C now considers contemporary software development techniques like Model-Driven Engineering. In particular Model-Driven Engineering has gained interest as a cost-and time-effective alternative reducing software development complexities by enabling reasoning at the model level. In this paper we present a review of a set of model-based approaches to assess their support for software development and certification under DO-178C. We built a framework to characterize these approaches according with several criteria, specially coverage of DO-178C's required information for compliance. We analyze the approaches using this framework and highlight their commonalities, differences, strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, we identify open issues on which research may focus.