Radar System Testability Design and Demonstration based on Fault Modes and Software Control

Abstract

Testability design and demonstration is very useful for ensuring the radar system quality and reliability. Most existing testability design and demonstration techniques which are achieved by the hardware control actions aren’t suitable for the radar system development requirements, and are very difficult for implementation in each development process. Meanwhile, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is an important method for improving system quality and the testability design and demonstration effectiveness. Thus, this paper presents a new radar system testability design and demonstration approach based on fault modes and software control actions. First, according to the software control action, the radar system testability design rules are presented which can be validated and used to isolate the faults, reconstruct the systems. Based on these rules, we design the test cases to achieve the testability demonstration by fault injection technique for validating the effectiveness of the testability design. Finally, we apply this new testability approach on the typical radar system to validate its availability and feasibility. The experimental results show that the proposed testability design and demonstration approach can improve the self-diagnosis ability of radar system significantly, reduce the fault rate, and support the positive feedback to the requirement and design of radar system or software.