Requirements Analysis of Approvable Software for a GLASS Ground Station according to DO-278A

Abstract

Large airports and hubs often provide landing systems as ILS and GLS. Therefore, the commercial air transport aircrafts are equipped with respective receivers to use the systems. These systems provide very accurate guidance to the aircraft, but they are also very expensive and for that reason not affordable for small airports. For that purpose, an SBAS to GBAS converter called GLASS was developed to provide SBAS service to GBAS receivers. However, to take that system at ground into operation, its software needs to be approved according to DO-278A. For this purpose, a software approval concept according to DO-278A is developed so that the software development process can be structured according to that concept. To develop that concept, an assurance level is inferred with a conclusion by analogy because the system development process does not offer it at this time. Eventually, the approval concept is based on assurance level 3. The approval concept mentions and sequences the required activities as well as the resulting data items to gain an effective approval procedure. However, the correctness of that concept could not finally be determined because the development and the approval process of GLASS had not been completed at the time this thesis was written