CLASSIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF FAILURE MODES FOR TIME-TRIGGERED SYSTEMS

A main step in evaluating reliability and safety properties of embedded communication systems consists in identifying potential failure modes. We present a classification of component and system level failure modes for time-triggered communication networks, such as TTP and FlexRay. Based on our experience in modeling and verifying industrial real-time systems, we propose a way to analyze the effect of these failure modes on a given system using the SAL framework. We discuss two modeling paradigms that are particularly suitable for time-triggered communication networks. These paradigms differ in the way time is represented, either as a discrete or a continuous variable. Moreover, we identify failure modes that can be represented by both modeling approaches, as well as failure modes that require a continuous representation.