An Automotive CD-Player Electro-Mechanics Fault Simulation Using VHDL-AMS

One of the most challenging tasks while designing an automotive electronic device is to take into account its whole electro-mechanic environment, so that time expensive failure tests can be reduced. We show a case study, developed in collaboration with an industrial partner, in which an automotive Compact Disk (CD) player is modelled. Using VHDL-AMS, not only its whole mixed-signal electro-mechanic structure, but the car one, the road profile and the audio input have been described as well. A set of fault analyses have been performed, too, using the developed model. Results demonstrate the feasibility of the methodology both as a substitute of traditional fault analyses, and as a method to inspect the failure causes. Besides, this approach allows to hilight, during the design phase, the key points to optimize the target device, taking into account its real application environment. As an example, our system is able to reliably predict reading errors due to road profile variations.