Functional, thermal and EMC analysis for a safety critical analogue design applied to a transportation systems

Abstract

Safety-critical equipment depends on the study of functional, thermal, EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility) and RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) fields. The variation of one area characteristic could result in a failure to fulfil safety requirements. Traditionally, thermal, EMC or RAMS issues were only considered once the design was done. This paper proposes a novel analogue equipment design methodology by studying these areas dependently from the beginning of the design process. Each area requirements and design parameters and the relation among them are defined qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on these dependences among all the areas, the cross-influence of each parameter variation in other areas requirements is demonstrated. The obtained results are intended to aid the fulfilment of requirements of the design of any safety critical analogue circuit, and to help designers to know beforehand the consequences of any change in the design, saving time and money. The application of this methodology in a SIL 2 RF transmitter is shown and the improvement and worsening of requirements depending on the parameters variation is exposed.