DO-254, the design assurance guideline for airborne electronic hardware, is considered to be a simple cut/paste of DO-178, its avionics software sibling. And while there are many similarities, the differences are worth noting as well.

DO-254 (and DO-178C) entails five different levels of design assurance, ranging from Level A (most critical) to Level E (least critical). In this whitepaper, we’ll walk through these five levels of design assurance and the benefits of correctly implementing DO-254, including:

• Greater upfront requirements clarity
• Fewer development iterations
• Few bugs found during testing