FAA awards WAAS Safety Computer contract to Verocel
NewsJuly 05, 2012
WASHINGTON. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials selected Verocel in Westford, Mass., under a $6.2 million single- source contract to develop the next-generation safety computer for use in the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). Verocel, a software verification company, will ensure that the safety computer will comply with RTCA/DO-178B1 and RTCA/DO-2542 to Level B.
Verocel engineers will design, build, and verify a new safety computer, that includes infrastructure software, against the safety computer item specification. The company also will assist FAA officials with the migration and verification work on the WAAS application software that is hosted on the WAAS safety computer.
WAAS is essentially an air navigation aid that is designed to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), to improve its accuracy, availability, and integrity. WAAS will enable aircraft to rely on GPS for all phases of flight, including any precision approaches to airports within its coverage area.
The new WAAS safety computers will become a part of the WAAS operational baseline; replacing the current safety computers and providing the resource capacity needed to perform the safety computer functions that are allocated in the WAAS architecture, today and in the future.
For this project Verocel officials have teamed with Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions to provide the commercial off- the-shelf (COTS) hardware components that make up the hardware platform for the WAAS safety computer.
Verocel is leading all phases of the safety computer’s development, design, and specification work, including system integration and test, hardware, and test, software verification and more -- right through to finished-goods manufacturing and product delivery, says George Romanski, Verocel president.
Verocel engineers also developed the certification materials for the current WAAS safety computer, and is the sole developer of DO-178B certification packages for the computer’s operating system – VxWorks from Wind River -- currently used in WAAS.
