Quality, both for electronics and software, is measured by a range of different characteristics. Table 1 shows how the measures of the quality of embedded systemscan themselves be defined by the characteristics of the software.
Quality characteristic Quality subcharacteristic
- Functionality suitability - accuracy, interoperability, security
- Reliability - maturity, fault tolerance, recoverability
- Usability - understandability, learnability, operability, attractiveness
- Efficiency - behaviour, resource utilisation
- Maintainability - analysability, changeability, stability, testability
- Portability - adaptability, installability, co-existence, replaceability
In addition to software, embedded systems use hardware. Embedded systems
- have to tolerate different environmental condition
- should not place an unacceptable load on the environment
Typical types of environmental issues are:
- mechanical (e.g. shock, vibration)
- electrical (e.g. resistance to over voltage)
- radiation related (e.g. displayscreen radiation)
- climatic (e.g. temperature, humidity)
- chemical (e.g. corrosive gases)
In addition a system must have an acceptable price (which is determined by supply, creation and usage costs), meet market-driven timing and match the quality that the market requires.
CATS tools for quality of embedded systems and their software are targeted at
- Reliability
- Safety and the related, non-functional, quality characteristics
- Maintainability
- Transferability
- Environmental compliance
CATS tools for quality of embedded systems and their software, support users in
- capturing the targets set by standards for embedded systems, whether these are set internally, or externally, and applying these guidelines to building check-lists for requirements management
- quantitative assessment of how well products and processes conform with standards
- calculating failure properties, a measure of the requirements for redundant hardware. These properties give important feedback on the software architecture required, based on the influence of self-test. How these tools are integrated in product and process development, verification & validation (V&V) and assessment is shown in the left figure
CATS also offers customers training programmes and seminars to help them achieve the required quality of products and processes. Contact Nohau if you are interested in what CATS can offer.
