Design verification enhancement of field programmable gate array-based safety-critical I&C system of nuclear power plant

Safety-critical instrumentation and control (I&C) system in nuclear power plant (NPP) implemented on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) plays a vital role in safe operation of the plant. The challenges such as fast obsolescence, the vulnerability to cyber-attack, and other related issues of software systems have currently led to the consideration of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as an alternative to PLCs because of their advantages and hardware related benefits. However, safety analysis for FPGA-based I&C systems, and verification and validation (V&V) assessments still remain important issues to be resolved, which are now become a global research point of interests. In this work, we proposed a systematic design and verification strategies from start to ready-to-use in form of model-based approaches for FPGA-based reactor protection system (RPS) that can lead to the enhancement of the design verification and validation processes. The proposed methodology stages are requirement analysis, enhanced functional flow block diagram (EFFBD) models, finite state machine with data path (FSMD) models, hardware description language (HDL) code development, and design verifications. The design verification stage includes unit test - Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) test and modified condition decision coverage (MC/DC) test, module test - MATLAB/Simulink Co-simulation test, and integration test - FPGA hardware test beds. To prove the adequacy of the proposed approaches, the design architect that focused on the RPS bistable trip logics which are the safety-critical functions of RPS are designed, analyzed, verified and discussed, using bistable fixed setpoint trip logic algorithms as case study. The results showed that the proposed approaches can enhance the design verification processes alongside the reduction in rigorous V&V tasks of FPGA-based safety-critical I&C system for NPP.