Generating Test Inputs for Embedded Control Systems

An essential aspect of a high-quality design process is the development of test patterns, or sets of test inputs, that can be applied to the final product or intermediate instantiations to identify faults and confirm correct system behavior. In the design of embedded control systems, in particular, the growing use of tools for computer-aided design and simulation increases the prospects for performing extensive testing of the control logic before it is realized in software and implemented on the target processor. The rapid growth of the complexity of embedded control systems and the demand for short design cycles have increased the interest in effective methods for automatic test generation. This article presents a new method for leveraging existing simulation models for embedded control system designs to generate test inputs automatically, thereby eliminating the time-consuming task of creating them manually. Of the two principal ways testing is used to validate system designs, the most common is postproduction to confirm the functionality of the final implementation and check for fabrication flaws. The results of the tests are compared with those