Symbolic system level reliability analysis

More and more embedded systems provide a multitude of services, implemented by a large number of networked hardware components. In early design phases, dimensioning such complex systems in terms of monetary costs, power consumption, reliability etc. demands for new analysis approaches at the electronic system level. In this paper, two symbolic system level reliability analysis approaches are introduced. First, a formal approach based on Binary Decision Diagrams is presented that allows to calculate exact reliability measures for small to moderate-sized systems. Second, a simulative approach is presented that hybridizes a Monte Carlo simulation with a SAT solver and delivers adequate approximations of the reliability measures for large and complex systems.