Effectiveness of Control Flow Checking Algorithms Using a Model-Based Software Design Approach: An Empirical Study

Many software-implemented control flow error detection techniques have been proposed over the years. However, applying these approaches can be difficult because their respective literature gives little guidance on the practical implementation in high-level programming languages, and they have to be implemented in low-level code, e.g., assembly. Moreover, the current trend in the automotive industry is to adopt the so-called Model-Based Software Design, where an executable algorithm model is automatically translated into C or C++ source code. This paper presents experimental data, compliant with the ISO26262 automotive functional safety standard, on the capabilities of Control Flow Checking (CFC) algorithms, implemented in the model and then automatically generated. The assessment was performed using a novel fault injection environment targeting a RISC-V (RV32I) microcontroller.