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Embedded electronic systems play an increasingly important role in the automotive field. Since they are the key to innovations and are the basis of most new functions, this paper deals with how to develop them. The first part identifies the problems that to a large extent arise from the particular organizational structure of the automotive industry. The second part of the paper describes an approach to how to control the complexity of the process. Information domains are introduced for this purpose. Contracts in these information domains between the process participants define the actual system behavior.

The newly developed communication system FlexRay® - The Communication System for Advanced Automotive Control Applications and the typical applications that it is designated for impose high demands on the system development process due to characteristics such as distribution and fault-tolerance and thus require a tool-supported development approach. This article gives an insight into a development process tailored to the particularities of FlexRay®-based real-time applications. The essential process steps are modeling and simulation on the one hand and scheduling and configuration on the other hand. Both steps are supported by software tools that substantially ease the process.

BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Motorola and Philips present their joint development activity related to the FlexRay communication system that is intended for distributed applications in vehicles. The designated applications for powertrain and chassis control place requirements in terms of availability, reliability and data bandwidth that cannot be met by any product currently available on the market under the testing conditions encountered in an automobile. A short look back on events so far is followed by a description of the protocol and its first implementation as an integrated circuit, as well as its incorporation into a complete tool environment.

The SAE has classified automotive electronics into two major categories, body electronics and system electronics. The latter (SAE class C) comprises safety critical functions that are of vital importance for the movement of the vehicle. This paper presents a prototype implementation of TTP, a time-triggered communication system developed for this type of applications. The main purpose of the prototype is to provide a means for verifying the concepts of TTP. The paper focuses on a description of the hardware developed for the communication system as well as the protocol software. The TTP controller hardware is a custom made industry pack module which allows the use of TTP in conjunction with a wide variety of existing motherboards and host environments. The protocol software consists of a TTP/C protocol state machine and auxiliary modules to access the various hardware units.

The provision of a system-wide global time base with good precision and accuracy is a fundamental prerequisite for the design of a time-triggered automotive real-time control system. In this paper we investigate the issues of clock synchronization in such a system. Our synchronization scheme allows every node to have a different oscillator. Based on typical parameters we derive the achievable precision and accuracy, which is in the microsecond range. The description of a prototype implementation shows the applicability of our approach.