Due to the electrically hostile environment that awaits a microprocessor based system in an automobile, it is necessary to use extra care in the design of software for these systems to ensure that the system is fault tolerant. Common faults that can occur include program counter faults, altered RAM locations, or erratic sensor inputs.
These faults are generally the results of EMI/RFI, battery under or over voltages, extreme temperature conditions, electrostatic discharge, or load dump.
Although system hardware should be designed to eliminate the effects of these perturbations, it is often impossible and costly to provide complete hardware protection, This paper intends to show several software techniques for effectively minimizing the effect of these faults on overall system function governed by software algorithms.