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Vehicle communication networks are challenged by increasing demands for bandwidth, safety, and security. New data is coming into the vehicle from personal devices (e.g. mobile phones), infotainment systems, camera-based driver assistance, and wireless communication with other vehicles and infrastructure. Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) provides high levels of bandwidth and security, making it a potential solution to the challenges of vehicle communication networks. However, in order to be used in control applications, Ethernet must provide known timing performance (e.g. bounded latency and jitter), and in some cases redundancy. This paper explores use of Ethernet for in-vehicle control applications.

FlexRay is a new networking protocol for embedded electronics. Technology using FlexRay provides improved throughput, determinism, and redundancy relative to existing designs using the Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol. Two criticisms of FlexRay are its increased cost and complexity compared to CAN. Although the cost will be reduced over time as usage goes up, the complexity issue is a problem of perception to some extent. This paper presents an example network design for CAN, and then adds network frames such that the throughput of CAN is exceeded. Next the paper describes how the example network design can be transitioned to FlexRay. The transition applies design practices used with CAN to reduce the complexity of FlexRay.

With the abundance of electronic devices and sensors in automotive technology, it has become increasingly important to establish efficient, cost-effective device validation methods for CAN, J1939, and GMLAN. An easy method of validation is simultaneous sampling of multiple measurements for comparison. For instance, if you have an ECU that receives inputs using CAN, and controls analog outputs, you can measure both CAN and analog data to verify that the ECU algorithm is behaving properly. This paper will discuss techniques for sharing timing and triggering signals between CAN, analog, and digital hardware to prevent clock drift and start latencies and reduce operating system jitter. We will cover techniques to use a common clock to drive multiple boards and specify events to trigger multiple board acquisitions. Timing and triggering signals can be shared in a PC through timing and triggering cables or in PXI through the PXI Trigger bus in the backplane.

The increasing number of features and complexity of today's automotive software architectures bring new challenges to the product development cycle. As a product is being developed, there is a need for information created during the early phases to flow seamlessly into subsequent phases. For example, information defined for an ECU during the design phase should be re-used when that ECU is tested during manufacture. Challenges often arise from the fact that one vendor's tools may be appropriate for design, but a different vendor's tools are best suited for manufacturing test. This paper discusses business and technical issues surrounding the transfer of information between such tools. Two case studies are used for discussion. One deals with databases describing signals transferred over an in-vehicle network and the other discusses simulation models as both transition from early designs through various test phases.