Measurement based software execution tracing in HIL (Hardware In the Loop) tests

Statistics show that in most of the automotive developments the role of the electronics is getting more and more significant. Some say that today, 90 percent of all innovation in the automotive sector are driven by electronics and software. Many of these developments and innovations affect safety critical functions. Standards like ISO 26262 give guidelines for testing electronic control units. Few of these guidelines give specification to the required test coverage for the software of the embedded systems. These requirements are usually based on Code Coverage metrics. This paper describes a novel integration way of a measurement based Code Coverage calculation method into a professional HIL (Hardware In the Loop) development system the NI VeriStand. The advantages of this integration compared to the existing separate coverage tools based solutions are introduced in details. The paper also describes the integration process with the challenges and our solutions given to them from the lower logical layer of execution trace data measurement to the presentation of Code Coverage calculation results.