Today’s cars are rapidly evolving into complex, software-defined systems. Much like enterprise IT infrastructures, modern vehicles integrate networks of processors, storage, sensors, and communication interconnects. This transformation demands the same rigorous testing used in the data storage industry—not just to ensure functionality, but to guarantee safety.
Safety is paramount in automotive systems, where failures can have serious consequences. To address this, comprehensive testing must simulate real-world fault conditions. Ǫuarch Technology’s Automotive Multi-Protocol Breaker is a great example of a tool for injecting physical-layer faults across various interfaces, including CAN, LIN, I2C, and 1000Base-T1 Ethernet. By introducing controlled disruptions, engineers can assess system resilience and ensure that vehicles handle unexpected faults gracefully.
For example: https://quarch.com/news/fault-injecting-on-ethernet/
Here is a simple test example, where a Breaker module was used to inject random errors into a device ethernet link. The actual link is very robust, even when there are major delays. However, performance degradation was huge. We found a 40% loss in application performance with only a small number of dropped packets. After investigating, we were able to correct an issue on packet retry and greatly improve fault tolerance.
Ethernet is a well-understood and fault-tolerant protocol, but as physical-layer errors increase, latency can spike significantly. How will your vehicle respond if camera footage is delayed or degraded due to a poor link? Testing is the only way to prove system reliability.
Using EMC coils to disrupt communication is one option to produce similar test conditions, but the errors created are less targeted and less repeatable—making it harder to find and fix issues.
A full protocol-based ‘jammer’, capable of reading and inserting errors directly onto the data stream, is an extremely powerful method of fault injection. However, it’s also a very expensive one and it can be tricky to know exactly what errors you should inject
As a vehicle ages, heat and vibrations will slowly degrade interconnects. The only reliable way to understand the impact is to directly simulate those failures during live testing. This is where a Ǫuarch Breaker or similar is key to providing the test scenarios you need.
To Explore Solutions for the Automotive Industry visit: https://quarch.com/solutions/automotive/
Ǫuarch Distributors in India: Electro Systems Associates Private Limited, Bangalore Website: www.esaindia.com
For further information, please write to: quarchsupport@esaindia.com
