Design assurance for airborne COTS hardware

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) avionic parts are relatively cheap (because of their high volume) and their short production life (because of the rate of technological progress), but they offer little design assurance (because purchasers do not demand it). This paper investigates how COTS hardware can be used in avionic systems where safety is paramount. The COTS issue is getting steadily more urgent for hardware. Realistic guidelines are achievable for the certification of equipment containing COTS items. Standards need to be seamless from the system level down to hardware and software, applied evenly to bespoke and COTS items, so as to avoid both gaps (which can be exploited by the unscrupulous) and anomalous overlaps (which can cause confusion about certification requirements).