Level A/B designs governed by RTCA/DO-254 must have additional verification for added design assurance. DO-254 Appendix B specifies several methods by which this can be accomplished. Today, the most common method is “Elemental Analysis,” which typically involves using code coverage to ensure that the verification activities exercise all the design code. The issue is that code coverage is not one thing, but rather an umbrella term that includes numerous code-oriented metrics. This paper explains each of those metrics, what is covered and what isn’t, and how the Mentor Graphics functional verification tools can be used to easily generate these metrics during simulation.

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