Analyzing dependability measures at the Electronic System Level

Raising the level of abstraction to design the next generation of embedded systems has become mandatory. This design methodology is commonly referred to Electronic System Level (ESL) design. Simultaneously, dependability of embedded systems becomes a major concern. To satisfy these demands already at ESL, we present a dependability analysis approach working directly at this level. The approach analyzes the effectiveness of dependability measures in SystemC-based virtual prototypes. Errors are injected into SystemC transactions using an XML-based configuration mechanism. This is combined with the specification of the expected behavior with respect to the injected errors. The developed analysis approach allows for validation of dependability measures as well as localization of missing or buggy measures. Experimental results for a complex image processing system, which determines the position of a game controller in video data, demonstrate the advantages of our approach.