System Reverse Engineering to Requirements and Tests

Abstract—The long operational phase of products in the aviation industry demands constant maintenance and adaptation of its systems in order to fulfill to the demands of customers and the market and prevent obsolescence. For this purpose, a display system – including all documentation and tools- will be transferred from development to a maintenance department to be supported there over a long duration. To be able to modify the transferred system, maintenance first needs to achieve an understanding of the system. Due to the long development phase, requirements of embedded systems in this domain are most often historically evolved, and only in rare cases formally documented. Typical weaknesses of informal requirements, such as incompleteness or inconsistency, pervade the subsequent levels of the system's life cycle ranging from design to testing. Insufficiently documented system behavior can be increased according to the methods of reverse engineering by analysis of the requirements and design. This article intends to analyze the state of documentation of an existing aviation system in order to create a solution for completing and improving legacy requirements and tests