On benchmarking the dependability of automotive engine control applications

The pervasive use of ECUs (electronic control units) in automotive systems motivates the interest of the community in methodologies for quantifying their dependability in a reproducible and cost-effective way. Although the core of modern vehicle engines is managed by the control software embedded in engine ECUs, no practical approach has been proposed so far to characterise the impact of faults on the behaviour of this software. This paper proposes a dependability benchmark for engine control applications. The essential features of such type of applications are first captured in a general model, which is then exploited in order to specify a standard procedure to assess dependability measures. These measures are defined taking into account the expectations of industrials purchasing engine ECUs with integration purposes. The benchmark also considers the current set of technological limitations that the manufacturing of modern engine ECUs imposes to the experimental process. The approach is exemplified on two engine control applications.