Case Study: Airbus Defence and Space achieves ED-80/DO-254 civil certification for FPGA flight-control hardware with MathWorks' Model-Based Design (MATLAB and Simulink)

Airbus Defence and Space Achieves Civil Certification with DO-254 (DAL A) FPGAs Using Model-Based Design

Airbus Defence and Space’s Airborne Electronic Hardware (AEH) group developed a flaps high lift control unit (HLCU) for the Airbus C295 and faced the challenge of meeting DO-254 (DAL A) civil certification requirements while applying rigor early in the requirements phase and still taking advantage of automated HDL code generation and verification reuse. To address this, they used MathWorks tools—MATLAB, Simulink, HDL Coder, and HDL Verifier—to adopt a Model‑Based Design approach.

Using MathWorks’ toolchain the team completed the full V‑model cycle (modeling, simulation, automatic HDL code generation, testing, and verification), enabled large-team collaboration with referenced models and ED‑80/DO‑254–tailored toolboxes, and produced quality HDL with full hardware verification and test reuse. This reduced design and test phases, improved error detection early in development, and led to the world’s first ED‑80/DO‑254 safety‑critical civil certification with EASA and FAA for an FPGA‑based flight‑control HLCU in early 2020.

Airbus Defence and Space

Ismael Alcalá

Airbus Defence and Space