Esterel Technologies - EN 50128 Certified Rail Software Solutions

Esterel Technologies, worldwide leader of model-based design and verification tools for critical embedded systems, provides SCADE Suite™. This unique solution reduces rail transportation control software development costs while achieving the highest levels of safety, including EN 50128 for all SIL.

MODEL-BASED DESIGN AND VERIFICATION TOOLS

Aircraft manufacturers and sub-contractors have been using SCADE Suite™ technology for more than 15 years. It is now being adopted by ground transportation constructors. SCADE generated production code for the Airbus A380 and A340-600, the Boeing 787, Eurocopter helicopters, the Falcon 7X business jet, the Peugeot 407 car, Hong-Kong subway, more than 20 power plants and many more.

In the rail domain, SCADE Suite™ is already used in particular by:

• Alstom Transportation
• Ansaldo Signal
• RATP
• SNCF
• Technicatome Rail
• Union Switch & Signal

Ansaldo Signal relies on SCADE Suite™ for large production projects to develop complex systems such as interlocking and train control. SCADE is used to specify the base signalling functions and to model the environment in compliance with the project principle, rules and the most stringent certification constraints. "SCADE is particularly relevant for our activities due to its strict modularity; a function once designed will always behave the same regardless of the context of usage" - Ansaldo

SCADE Suite™ development platform can benefit to applications with significant rail transportation safety implications such as on-board software, automatic train operations, power management, interlocking and train control systems, signalling, ground stations and other train and operations control applications.

OPEN MODEL-BASED DESIGN ENVIRONMENT FOR SAFETY-CRITICAL EMBEDDED SOFTWARE

Today, most railway transportation systems are automated and software controlled. New methods and tools are becoming necessary in this increasingly aggressive market where pressure on cost is ever increasing. 

SCADE Suite™ provides a complete set of tools for verification and validation, and automatically generates a certified set of code ready to be integrated in the system. This enables to avoid expensive and tedious tests and reviews of the generated code, which otherwise often consumes more than 50% of the development budgets.

SCADE Suite™ is the model-based development environment dedicated to safety-critical embedded software:

• EN 50128 certified for all SIL by TÜV SÜD for rail transportation
• IEC 61508 certified for all SIL by TÜV SÜD for heavy equipment and energy
• DO-178B qualified up to level A for aerospace

BENEFITS OF SCADE Suite™ IN RAIL AND TRANSPORTATION

SCADE Suite™ enables to develop software, including variants, in a well-defined, efficient, reproducible and cost-effective manner.

SCADE Suite™ reduces development and verification costs while achieving safety and integrity:

• Coding, review and testing costs reduced by 70% to 90%
• Manual quality activities cost cut down by 70% to 90%
• Software update cycle time shortened by 65% to 75%

POWERFUL FORMAL VERIFICATION AT SPECIFICATION LEVEL

Completely integrated in the SCADE GUI, SCADE Design Verifier enables the formal verification of safety properties. Properties are expressed in the same SCADE notation, making formal verification easily available to every designer.

UNIQUE PRODUCTION CODE GENERATOR CERTIFIED ACCORDING TO EN 50128 AND IEC 61508 STANDARDS

SCADE Suite™ generated code:

• Is MISRA® compliant, modular, portable, optimised and strictly conforming to ANSI C standards
• Behaves deterministically ('what you specify is what you embed'), eliminating the need for intensive and repeated unit testing
• Supports all commercial and proprietary Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) and schedulers

SCADE Suite™ Design Verifier is based on Prover Plug-In™, a trademark of Prover Technology AB in Sweden, the United States and other countries.

MISRA is a registered trademark of MIRA Ltd., held on behalf of the MISRA Consortium.