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Assurance Engineer Experience and Training

Quality assurance engineers need to possess sufficient domain knowledge to evaluate the completeness and correctness of complex electronics requirements and design. They must have the ability to determine whether the design has incorporated all requirements accurately. If you are not an electrical engineer and do not have significant experience with complex electronics, you probably don't have that domain knowledge. For some process activities, you may wish to find an expert (either in the assurance arena or in engineering) to help you or to independently perform an analysis or evaluation. The most important aspect of assurance is evaluation by someone other than the designer, but not all evaluations have to be performed by the quality assurance engineer.

However, the majority of assurance activities for complex electronics can be performed by either hardware or software assurance engineers, with minimal training. Requirements verification and tracing, interface analysis, and many other tasks and analyses do not require in-depth domain knowledge. Process assurance activities (e.g., audits) are nearly the same across all assurance disciplines. What has to be learned is the terminology, the development process that will be followed, and a high-level understanding of the devices.

This assurance process web site provides some of the background information necessary for assurance engineers to perform assurance processes on complex electronics. Additional training will be helpful for those who are not familiar with complex electronics. In the table below, recommended topics are paired with training or information sources. The topics are recommendations only, and should not be construed as requirements on the assurance engineers. Likewise, the sources for training or information have been found to be useful, but they are not the only means to acquire the knowledge.

Note: Many of the sites below are external to NASA. The originating site may change the location or remove the information at any time. Please report any broken links to the Curator. Information on additional training sources is also welcome.

Topic	Source of Information or Training
Training Courses	Available from Satern end of 2007: Introduction to Complex Electronics Complex Electronics Design Overview Assurance for Complex Electronics
Hardware Description Languages (HDL):	http://www.icd.com.au/vhdl.html (FPGA, VHDL) http://equipe.nce.ufrj.br/gabriel/vhdlfpga.html (FPGA, VHDL)
Verilog	http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/verilog_designers_guide/ http://www.asic-world.com/verilog/veritut.html
VHDL	http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/vhdl_designers_guide/ http://www.gmvhdl.com/VHDL.html http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee475/tutorial/VHDLTut.htm
SystemC	http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/systemc/ http://www.systemc.org/
SystemVerilog	http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/sysverilog/
Devices (FPGAs, CPLDs, ASICs)	http://www.epanorama.net/links/fpga.html http://www.mrc.uidaho.edu/fpga/index.php http://www.fpga4fun.com/ http://www.fuse-network.com/fuse/training/index.html http://www10.edacafe.com/aws/book_list.php?interstitial_displayed=Yes http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/ http://www.fpgajournal.com/ http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/air_software/media/AR-95-31-CEH.pdf.pdf

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Curator: Richard Plastow
NASA Official: Cynthia Calhoun
Last Updated: 10/14/2009