Application of Software Failure Mode and Effect Analysis for On-board software

Software is an integral part of Spacecrafts. Need of complex mission, operator & autonomy requirements have initiated comprehensive On-board software requirements. In order to analyze the design of this complex and evolving requirements, an analysis technique is worked out to identify faults at the lowest level, their propagation and effect on the system. “Software Failure Mode Effect Analysis (SFMEA)” is a technique which can be used to detect single point failure in the software and also effect of hardware failure on software. System & mission engineers can utilize the outcome of SFMEA for improvement during design phase and error free-handling during on-orbit phase respectively. Authors of this paper have come out with an innovative approach to carry out SFMEA. This paper demonstrates the approach and outcome along with the case study applied to one of the modules of On-board software. A template has also been created to record the SFMEA findings.