Fault Injection Systems

Novasom’s Validation systems – Fault Injection HIL ®

Our unique and patented Fault injeciton Validation System has been minded thinking to the limitation of systems availiable on nowadays market, with the vision of an experience  born and grew up in the past 25 years of activity for T1 ADAS  and OEM’s, struggling with ISO 26262A tests.

The system is composed by a nail bed , specified on the DUT and an array of embedded CPU that drive the injections on each nail to allow system react.

Why we’ve done this  ? Because It’s clear that complex safety critical products require tools and methods to be validated in every possible test cases also at white box level, and  we’re not discoursing here about the necessity of a complete and complex Software In the loop SIL approach that’s absolutely needed , but  that the fault shall be really injected with proper in time and value, so real, not only simulated with any FMDEA table or a SW trap.

This practical approach gives you the total vision : all the possible fault has been really tested and the DUT system is able to handle it properly. Plus you have the proof .

How it works ?

A nail bed that touch test pad of your products , properly minded on a DFT analisys, connected to an array of embedded CPU ( no os there, things are deterministic )  able to – properly –  inject fault you can determine with any vector or matlab tools ,  in order to give you the possibility to test your HW and SW response to that from your SIL enviromental or tools.

In everyone of the thousands and thousands cases, pin , injection needed . Yes.

While doing validation of safety critical systems in the automotive , railways and military market , it’s clear that the validation became complex  when numbers of test points-cases goes high to several hundreds-thousands: not feasible by any operators by hands.

Unfortulately , the big thick  Software In the loop emulations systems , that could offer also an hardware connections board ,  are not deterministic at microseconds ( sometimes much much over)  , cost a lot of time and money in licences, hardware and learning curve .

Sometimes , they create also significant problems when to create and inject  hundreds or thousands levels of contacts withimpedence matching level , distorcing signals or alterating the working status of delicate circuitery. WHere and how to touch a pcb is not an options and need to be studied with a proper DTF.

Our engineering pragmatic approach have clearly seen those limitation on the field , and the necessity drove us to develop a system able to be used by those extremely wide and complex SW validation SIL  platform  tools – we absolutely need as main source of test cases – SW analisys.

 This is why and how our Fault Injection HIL’s was born. 

Testing and validationg your specific products with pure Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) Fault injection systems you can simpy drive with 232 message, already integrated or simply integratable in your  Functional safety analysis or SIL tools , both at HW ans SW level and to make real test in every possible scenario.

Download the Guide

Send the command, get the results in milliseconds, with precision in the microsecond range and time determinism — as only a real embedded system can deliver.

Use it integrated into any validation system — SIL you are using — it will work perfectly because it is message-based.

A high-level graphical proprietary programming language, which is widely used in today’s testing world using FPGAs, cannot provide such capabilities.

This new holistic approach, which combines system-level and product-level fault injection, will allow you to validate, test, and report any HW fault behavior as well as any related SW diagnostics or processes, in ways that haven’t been possible before.

Our HIL systems are standard products, but they can be adapted by our engineers to meet any of your specific needs — with their own dedicated nail bed fixture — just like with electrical I/O fault injections. This addresses, for example, the requirements of ISO 26262, EN 50155, and MIL-STD-461E, while providing you with real, replicable reports.

A real-world, full validation and testing capability is available now , for both HW ans SW side. The academic methodology we studied for years states theoretical fault models, which are sometimes simply not real and not enough to justify what has been done or tested. 

Any Hardware test is now really  possible, enabling you to test the actual global functioning of your system as disturbed in any way the FMEDA analysis (now truly meaningful!) or test cases suggest.

With our help — for sure — because our team will work with you to ensure the success of your testing plan.

Using these systems, you will benefit from our engineering expertise — included in the package.

Just contact us 

Through custom extension boards supporting CAN, Ethernet, I2C, and SPI, our systems will provide comprehensive, flexible testing. Many clients already benefit from the speed and depth our systems deliver in functional safety analysis. Join us!