The client is a tier-1 aerospace supplier based in the USA. The product initially was not required to be DO-254 compliant, and was designed that way. Flight tests were successful, but the PLD-based system was reclassified as complex by FAA, at a later stage. The Hardware Descriptive Language (HDL) used was ABEL and lacked support for Elemental Analyis that is essential for DO-254 certification.

Given that the documentation was limited, the solution was to reverse-engineer the system to comply with DO-254 certification requirements. Detailed box-level as well as device-level requirements were captured and code coverage analysis was done without support from ABEL.

A comprehensive risk-mitigation plan and extreme detailing in artifacts enabled the success of this project. Not only was the product compliant to FAA standards, but the DO-254 DAL A audit was conducted without any findings.