Functional safety is very important for the safety critical systems in any domain. The main objective of the functional safety is to reduce unacceptable hazards’ risk probability to acceptable levels. The standard guidelines based on past failures and fixes helps in not repeating the already identified problems. Each domain such as Aerospace, Automotive have come up with the Functional safety standards based on the domain’s core functionality and associated safety context. This document aims to provide comparison between different Software Functional safety standards from Avionics, Automotive and Medical electronics domain.
This document provides overview and comparison of software functional safety standards in Avionics, Automotive and Medical electronics domains.
Error in a Hardware/Software results into a Fault. A fault or group faults in a system result into a Failure which may trigger Hazardous condition. Depends on the Hazard’s severity, there will be risk to system safety. The below diagram explains the relationship between Error, Fault, Failure, Hazard, and Risk.
Failures in a system are two types a) Systematic failures b) Random hardware failures.
Systematic failures are development errors which are deterministic, risks due to systematic failures can be prevented by developing Hardware and Software to correct design standard(guidelines) and perform safety analysis and system verification. Risks due to Random hardware failures can be reduced by deploying correct active safety mechanism (e.g., Built in tests) into system.