Verification of On-board Software of ISRO Launch Vehicles Using Polyspace-A Case Study

Abstract

With advent of novel and complex Launch vehicle missions and increase in frequency of launches, On board software development life cycle demands a faster and error free mode of operations. The increased pace of development calls for the need of more and more automation being built into both development and quality assurance processes. Exhaustive manual testing of complex embedded software poses many challenges involving both time and effort. Moreover, it is highly essential to uncover the errors at earlier stages of software life cycle rather than allowing the errors to migrate till end which results in increase of cost and effort to correct it. Static Verification of the code has been proven as one of the effective mechanisms in uncovering potential defects that would escape even multiple test strategies. In this paper we will be sharing our experiences of using Poly space verifier - A static analysis tool which helped us in bringing out several significant pointers to error prone conditions in On board software and thereby correcting it before unit testing. Application software involved in the Guidance and control of the Launch vehicle was selected for the analysis purpose.