Firmware Architectures and Hardware Entropy Sources for Automotive Cybersecurity and Functional Safety

Modern vehicles are increasingly reliant on complex electronic systems, making the assurance of both functional safety and cybersecurity essential for overall reliability. This thesis addresses these dual challenges by presenting a comprehensive approach that integrates safety and security considerations into automotive electronic design. The first part of the work focuses on the development of ISO 26262-compliant firmware architectures for microcontroller-based platforms, carried out in close collaboration with Infineon Technologies Italy. This collaboration enabled the creation of robust, fault-tolerant firmware solutions that meet stringent automotive safety requirements and can be integrated as Safety Elements out of Context (SEooC) in diverse vehicle systems. The second part of the thesis investigates hardware entropy sources for automotive cybersecurity, introducing a tunable true random bit generator (T-TRBG) architecture based on Digital Nonlinear Oscillators (DNOs) and implemented on Xilinx Artix-7