FMEA on Critical Systems: A Cross-Layer Approach Based on High-Level Models
Résumé
Designing embedded systems for critical applications requires meeting strict safety constraints according to official standards. In current practice, safety analysis (e.g., Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is often only relying on human experience and therefore lacks detailed data. Performing more detailed analyses on complex systems is a major challenge to avoid pessimistic assumptions and consequently to avoid over-design of the system, i.e., adding too many protections with respect to the system specifications and risk. Many fault injection techniques have been previously proposed to better evaluate the robustness of circuit designs described at various abstraction levels. However, very few take into account the global system constraints. Also, fault injection experiments become very time-consuming for complex designs. At the highest levels of abstraction (e.g., Transaction level), simulations are faster but suffer of the lack of realism of high-level models. Our contribution is to propose both an increase in safety analysis precision and a fault injection flow improving the analysis duration. The flow is based on an iterative process, taking into account the global system specifications and allowing improvements of high-level models to achieve both precision and efficiency. Improvements are based on metrics, and results are shown on a real airborne system.