SVATS ver.0.1 - September 2001
"Safety Verification Analysis
Added To Spice"
author: Francesco Campedelli <campedel@email.com>
Home Page: svats.sourceforge.net
INTRODUCTION
SVATS is a collection of Python scripts used for adding repetitive analysis capabilities for simulating analog and mixed analog-digital electronic circuits.
SVATS can be useful for:
- Railway Safety Verification analysis of the so called "inherent fail-safe" hardware, which is basically made of analog circuits. In this case SVATS can be used to perform a FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) on a given circuit, to help the designer (or the validation engineer) assessing the safety of a circuit or of a part of it, according to Railway Safety Standard ORE A155.3 and prEN50129.
- Automatic evaluation of "overstressed" components, provided that you define a database of the maximum electrical ratings of your components (i.e. breakdown voltages for diodes, transistors, capacitors, ...). This function is not yet implemented as of release 0.1.
- Automatic evaluation of components' stress levels, used for reliability analysis (MTBF calculation).
- With a little effort, I think you can use it for safety analysis also in aerospace (avionics) and other electronic fields. I'll be glad to learn more about it ...
LICENSE
SVATS is released under Gnu Public License (GPL); see enclosed file COPYING copyright (C) 2001 Francesco Campedelli
REQUIREMENTS
SVATS requires a computer equipped with:
- Python 1.52 (later versions should work as well - mot tested anyway)
- Gadfly 1 SQL database extension for Python (available at http://www.chordate.com/gadfly.html)
- Berkeley SPICE 3F5 or compatible (SVATS has been tested with OPUS SPICE, which include mixed mode simulation and is available for WINXX, LINUX and SOLARIS i386 at http://fides.fe.uni-lj.si/spice/)
SVATS 0.1 has been developed and tested on a Debian "Potato" 2.2r0 Linux PC. It should work on any Linux machine and possibly also on other UNIX platforms. Testers for other platforms are warmly welcomed ...
LIMITATIONS
As of first version (0.1) SVATS doesn't support:
- subcircuit expansion (i.e. you can't perform FMEA on the components included in a subcircuits, if the subcircuit is kept in a library file instead than in the given input circuit file).
TODO
- add a module for changing the database values for each single component
- add the capability to change model parameters for semiconductors (e.g. gain, breakdown voltage, ...)
- add automatic result evaluation, provided a set of evaluation rules
- add the possibility to run under MS Windows
- add support for other simulators (ACS, commercial onees under Windows, ...)