A Novel Approach for Testing the Robustness of Networked Components in Vehicles Against Dynamic Power Supply Faults

Future automobiles will be characterized by automated driving features which demand an outstanding reliability of safety critical components. To ensure the needed safety in operation of the automated driving systems, the power supply must support a basic functionality in the case of a supply component failure. Typical component tests regarding the supply system are simplified and cannot consider the propagation of voltage pulses or drops along the power supply system and faulty system interactions. A new testing approach has been developed which considers these effects. The propagation of power supply system faults in a supply network are simulated first, and the time dependent voltage profiles are calculated for each attached electronic component individually. In a second step, voltage profiles gained from simulations are supplied by a highly dynamic voltage source to the electronic components and possible interactions are analyzed in this setup. The test method is presented and analyzed. In an exemplary automotive setup two redundant electronic components are interacting via the CAN communication bus. It is discussed how highly dynamic power supply system faults can lead to unexpected system interactions, not considered in today's testing approaches.