Model-Implemented Fault Injection for Hardware Fault Simulation

Abstract

This paper presents how model-implemented fault injection can be utilized to simulate the effect of hardware-related faults in embedded systems. A fault injection environment has been developed to enable comparison of experiments at model level and hardware level using Simulink and an Infineon microcontroller, respectively. Experiments at model level, leading to safety requirement violations, are automatically repeated at hardware level to compare the fault effects. Artifacts in a Simulink model (e.g. block output ports) are automatically mapped to memory addresses obtained from a linker generated map file. Thus, the same variable can be manipulated by the fault injection environment at both model and hardware level. For the automotive application evaluated, experiments show that the effects of data errors at model level and hardware level are similar excluding the experiments leading to exceptions.