FIRED -- Fault Injector for Reconfigurable Embedded Devices

Reconfigurable embedded devices built on SRAM-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are being increasingly used in critical embedded applications. However, the susceptibility of such memory cells to Single Event Upsets (SEU) requires the use of fault tolerant designs, for which fault injection is still the most accepted verification technique. This paper describes FIRED, a fault injector targeted at SRAM-based FPGAs for dependability evaluation of critical systems. This tool is able to perform hardware fault injection in real-time, by inserting bitflips at the SRAM cells through partial dynamic reconfiguration. These faults may produce errors in the design of the VHDL or Verilog modules deployed in the FPGA. A case study of a fault injection campaign in a PID-based cruise control system is used to evaluate the capabilities of FIRED, namely its capacity of injecting faults while a physical application is being controlled.