Verocel Awarded WAAS Safety Computer Contract

Project Is Part of FAA Upgrades to Wide Area Augmentation System to Improve GPS Performance for Passenger Air Travel


WESTFORD, MA--(Marketwire - Jun 26, 2012) -  Verocel Inc., a leading independent software verification company serving the global safety-critical software industry, announced today it has received a $6.2 million single-source contract from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to develop the next-generation safety computer for use in the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). The safety computer will be compliant with RTCA/DO-178B1 and RTCA/DO-2542 to Level B.

Verocel will design, construct and verify a new safety computer, including infrastructure software, against the safety computer item specification. Verocel also will assist the FAA in the migration and verification efforts for the WAAS application software hosted on the WAAS safety computer.

Verocel has teamed with Curtiss-Wright Controls, Defense Systems Group, 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 its accuracy, integrity, and availability. Essentially, WAAS is intended to enable aircraft to rely on GPS for all phases of flight, including precision approaches to any airport within its coverage area.

"For Verocel, this contract award is particularly significant because it validates that our expertise extends beyond safety-critical software verification and is indeed fully system-wide in scope," said George Romanski, president of Verocel. "We are leading all phases of the WAAS safety computer development, specification and design effort, including hardware, system integration and test, software verification and more, all the way through to finished-goods manufacturing and delivery."

The new 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-178B certification packages for the operating system (Wind River VxWorks) currently used in WAAS.

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 services in the avionics, nuclear, and railway industries. 

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. In addition to verification compliance consulting services, Verocel has a suite of tools that makes developing certification materials considerably more efficient.

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1 RTCA/DO-178B - Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification
2 RTCA/DO-254 - Design Assurance Guidance For Airborne Electronic Hardware

Contact Information:

Media Contact:
Bill Bradley
Bottom Line Communications
978/692-7422