An approach for the assurance of legacy systems based on programmable electronic hardware

摘要

Providing assurances in newly developed Programmable Electronic Hardware (PEH) used in safety critical system is becoming standard practise following the development of standards such as DO 254. Although these standards mention legacy PEH, they lack detail on the assurance approaches that should be used. This situation is made more challenging by the fact that often limited developmental evidence is available to form an assurance argument, as the PEH supplier may not have been contractually required to produce such evidence. However, the assurance of legacy PEH needs to be provided due to situations such as systems upgrades. This paper examines the issues of assuring legacy PEH and provides a pragmatic PEH assurance approach. This approach is illustrated in case study of a generic control system that is based on a class of industrial systems.