Software Event/Fault Injection

As software engineers will know there is a technique known as mocking. Used during product development, mocking modifies the system’s code to force certain behaviour; typically to make the DUT interpret inputs in a different way.

BELIeVE can be used for mocking. For example, if your product is a battery management system (BMS) for an electric vehicle, it may need to accept 800VDC as an input for monitoring purposes. If you don’t have easy access to a battery pack, supplying the BMS with 800VDC will require a dedicated and expensive PSU. However, if you place mocking software on the DUT that has a test mode, BELIeVE can access this through the back channel to treat every 1VDC in as if it were 100VDC. A standard benchtop PSU can easily supply 8VDC, which the DUT treats as if it were 800VDC.

Though the BMS will still need to be tested with the correct input voltage (to exercise the ADC hardware, for example), you can verify that the software is functioning correctly ahead of time. For instance, does the software react correctly to over-voltage situations? This strategy makes best use of your existing test equipment and reduces the amount of time you need to hire specialist test kit.