How virtual system prototypes (VSPS) improve fault injection based validation of safety-critical automotive components over traditional approaches

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How virtual system prototypes (VSPS) improve fault injection based validation of safety-critical automotive components over traditional approaches

Schnieringer, Martin / Paczan, Michael

The availability of powerful and low-cost micro-controllers (MCUs) continues to drive the trend in the automotive industry to increase the number of networked ECUs used in a vehicle. The enormous cost pressure in this segment now even pushes for replacing mechanical and hydraulic safety-critical components such as brakes and steering systems with their electric counterparts so called X-by-wire-systems. As those electric components are key to the correct and safe operation of the vehicle new, validation techniques have to be adopted to make sure the overall system is fault tolerant and stable at any time. This paper will show how Virtual System Prototypes (VSPs) can be used to inject faults to the system simulation to improve the validation of those safety-critical automotive components. The paper also covers the variety of possible faults in such an environment and the advantage of this virtual approach over traditional intrusive hardware and software based fault injections.