Simulation-based sensitivity and worst-case analyses of automotive electronics

Simulation-based verification of electronic control units must face demands related to more functionality and less time to verify it. To ensure a reliable system, one must determine how the omnipresent, internal and external variations affect the target response, and find safe bounds for it. The main challenge is to optimally characterize a high number of sources of variation, with a reduced number of simulation runs. The paper conducts more efficient sensitivity and worst-case studies by applying concepts of Design of Experiments: screening to reduce the dimension of the verification space; sequential experiments for sensitivity analysis; gradient-based search for response bounds. The approach is evaluated on simulations of an airbag driver IC and compared with alternative methods.