Fault injection ecosystem for assisted safety validation of automotive systems

The ever-increasing number of safety-related, complex, interconnected electronic systems results in new challenges. We propose a comprehensive fault injection ecosystem applicable along the design process to cope with these challenges. Simulation models are extended with fault injectors and used to assess the effects of faults. Our approach solves challenges specific to abstract system models and the reuse of existing simulation models. The proposed ecosystem consists of a system simulation infrastructure, a fault specification with dynamic fault injection, a fault effect classification and a graphical user interface. The simulation infrastructure enables the reuse and variation of simulation models and supports design space explorations. Our fault specification enables the specification and simulation of faults at different abstraction levels, especially at the abstract system level. The minimal invasive fault injection approach reduces the manual overhead when using existing simulation models and supports models of different abstraction levels. A failure classification extends the traditional verification methods. A graphical user interface simplifies the application and automatic code generation reduces the manual effort. The analysis of a driver assistance system demonstrates the usage of the proposed ecosystem.