Fault-Injection for Software-in-the-Loop Testing of Networked Railway Systems

Verification is an important step during the development process of safety-critical railway applications. Verifying the functionality already at early development stages can prevent integration issues in later steps. Hence, typically used technologies are co-simulation, Software-in-the-Loop testing and fault-injection. The latter is a good opportunity to inject faults deterministically into software or simulation models of a device. This way, the functionality of the network and end devices can be verified effectively in cases of errors. In this paper we extend an existing framework for distributed co-simulation by the means of fault-injection. Our mechanism is based on the CENELEC EN 50159 standard which defines seven message errors for communication. As the framework operates on a network-centric abstraction level, we inject the faults directly into the packets. The evaluation shows the applicability of our fault-injection mechanism based on an example application.

I. Introduction

When designing a complex system, its verification is one major step during the development process. In case of safety-critical applications such as railway systems, this step is even more important as human life might be endangered if valid safety arguments are not provided. Due to the increasing complexity of the developed systems, a verification during early development stages helps to prevent later integration problems. Typically used techniques are co-simulation, Software-in-the-Loop testing and fault-injection.