Functional Safety and EMC: Monte Carlo Study of the Impact of Function Redundancy on a System Immunity

Functional safety is a growing concern in the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) community. In this article we propose to study the impact of the function redundancy on the overall system immunity to radiated emissions. An ideal case is presented and simulations of the electric field in a metallic enclosure are used to simulate a more realistic and pragmatic case. A simple logical device with two sub-functions is then simulated with data from measurements in a reverberation chamber and data from simulations. This simple system shows that despite the complexity of the overall problem, statistics can help to simulate the probability of failure of a device and to optimise its functional safety.