Railway increasingly depends on software applications with Safety-critical functions. They have to be certified according to EN 50128 with international acknowledgement due to transnational cooperation. A modular software platform can help to reduce certification cost and speed up the process.
Safety-critical software applications for the Railway industry have to be certified after EN 50128. EN 50128 has been released in 2001 by CENELEC and is based on the IEC 61508 standard for electrical / electronic / programmable electronic equipment. EN 50128 defines Safety requirements of software for Railway applications (communication, signalling and processing systems), Railway control and protection systems. Analogous to IEC 61508, the EN 50128 standard distinguishes as well four Safety Integrity Level (SIL) according to the probability of failures and their potential damage.
Safety Levels
SIL (Safety Integrity Level)
SIL 4 - Highest
SIL 3
SIL 2
SIL 1 - Lowest
(SIL 0 - Base integrity)
Reducing Time-to-Market via Safety CertKits
The PikeOS certification approach is modular and hardware independent to the upmost extend. Certifications can be easily extended to different hardware platforms with additional certifiable artefacts, such as a certifiable IP stack, POSIX, Math Library or a filesystem. The tool chain is qualified and the Safety methods and considerations are adapted according to the respected vertical market. PikeOS is certifiable according to the latest industry certification standards. We engage in a close manner with major homologation institutes. The CertKit supports the certification process of the entire system, thus reduces time-to-market. PikeOS comes with requirement documents (all hierarchy levels) that are structured by requirement IDs and can be reused in customer documentation for traceability.
Other standards can be met via compliance matrices.
The PikeOS CertKit is a bundle of evidences for a specific PikeOS version and hardware. It contains:
Tool Operational Requirements of customer-related tools
Interface Specifications
User Manual
Each CertKit comes with a frequently updated Safety bulletin, mentioning known Safety alerts and improvements. Customers can switch to long term maintenance for a selected certifiable product.
