Verocel Inc., Awarded WAAS Safety Computer Delivery Contract
Project Is Part of FAA Wide Area Augmentation System to Improve Operational Performance for Private, Corporate and Commercial Air Travel
Westford, MA, October 25, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Verocel Inc., a leading independent software verification company serving the global safety-critical software industry, announced today it has received a $2.8 million single-source contract from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to deliver up to fifty (50) next-generation safety computers for deployment in the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS).
Verocel was awarded the contract to design, construct and develop the certification evidence for the safety computers, including infrastructure software, against the safety computer item specification in 2012. Verocel has teamed with Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions and Atrenne Computing Solutions to provide the commercial off-the-shelf hardware components that comprise the hardware platform for the WAAS safety computer.
WAAS is an air navigation aid designed to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving GPS accuracy, integrity, and availability and is a key component of the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation (NEXTGEN) system. As of September 2016, there are 3,722 Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Localizer Performance with Vertical guidance (LPV) approach procedures serving 1812 airports, which offer all-weather, precision guidance information to participating aircraft. Over 1000 of these airports are non-instrument landing system airports, meaning that without WAAS, these airports would have no precision guidance capabilities.
"Verocel is proud to be a key part of the WAAS safety computer development and production,” said George Romanski, president of Verocel. "This production win validates our customer’s trust in our ability not only to design and verify safety-critical software and hardware but also to be a trusted lifecycle supplier".
“We are very excited to be able to contribute with Verocel to the production of this critical FAA system upgrade,” said Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions division. “Our rugged open architecture VME-183 single board computer modules help to lower the cost of ownership for the WAAS system through the use of COTS technology.”
The additional safety computers will become part of the WAAS operational baseline; replacing the existing safety computers and providing the resource capacity necessary to perform the safety computer functions allocated in the WAAS architecture, now and in the future. Verocel has prior experience in developing the certification materials for the existing WAAS safety computer, and is also the sole developer of DO-178B1 certification packages for the operating system currently used in WAAS, and developed the PDL based voting logic using DO-2542.
1 RTCA/DO-178B - Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification
2 RTCA/DO-254 - Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware
About Verocel, Inc.
Verocel (www.verocel.com) provides expertise and services for software verification in the safety-critical software industry. With a strong presence in the U.S. and in Europe, Verocel has extensive experience providing safety-critical software tools and services in the aerospace, automotive, and industrial systems.
Tools include Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools and services include development and review of software plans and standards, software requirement and test development, software structural coverage analyses, life cycle data traceability, and outsource support.
About Curtiss-Wright Corporation
Curtiss-Wright Corporation (www.curtisswright.com) is a global innovative company that delivers highly engineered, critical function products and services to the commercial, industrial, defense and energy markets. Building on the heritage of Glenn Curtiss and the Wright brothers, Curtiss-Wright has a long tradition of providing reliable solutions through trusted customer relationships. The company employs approximately 8,400 people worldwide. For more information, visit www.curtisswright.com. For more information about Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division, please visit www.curtisswrightds.com.
Source: Verocel, Inc.