Testing and Fault Tolerance

Modern electronic systems are increasingly used in safety-critical and mission-critical applications, including automotive, aerospace, railway, biomedical, industrial, and embedded systems. In these contexts, correct functionality is not sufficient: systems must also be tested effectively, evaluated in terms of reliability, and designed to tolerate or mitigate the effects of faults.

This course introduces the fundamental concepts, methods, and practical techniques used to improve the dependability of digital and embedded systems. The first module of the course presents the basic terminology of dependability, testing, faults, errors, failures, and fault models. The second and third modules focus on test generation and design-for-testability techniques, including fault simulation, ATPG, scan design, Built-In Self-Test, Boundary Scan, and SoC testing standards. The final module introduces basic fault-tolerant design strategies, reliability evaluation methods, fault injection, radiation effects, and risk analysis.

By combining testing and fault tolerance, the course provides students and practitioners with an engineering perspective on how to detect defective systems before deployment and how to design systems that remain reliable and safe during operation.