Integrating automotive applications using overlay networks on top of a time-triggered protocol

Abstract

The integration of multiple automotive subsystems (e.g., powertrain, safety, comfort) on a single distributed computer system can significantly reduce the number of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and networks for in-vehicle electronic systems. The benefits of this integration include reduced hardware cost and reliability improvements due to fewer connectors. However, a major challenge in such an integrated automotive architecture is the management of access to the shared communication resources (i.e., the common network). In order to support a seamless integration of application subsystems from different vendors and to permit the integration of application subsystems with different criticality levels, a fault in one application subsystem should not have an adverse affect on the resources that are available to other application subsystems. For this reason, we devise a solution for encapsulating the communication activities of application subsystems in this paper. Each application subsystem is provided with a dedicated overlay network on top of an underlying timetriggered network. Such an overlay network has predefined temporal properties (i.e., latencies, bandwidths), which are independent from the communication activities on the overlay networks of other application subsystems. An exemplary configuration of the overlay networks in a prototype implementation demonstrates that the encapsulated overlay networks can handle the communication load of a present day car with the additional time-triggered traffic of future X-by-wire subsystems. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.