Search Results

The development of innovative vehicle systems is driven by the demand for improvement in comfort, reduction in fuel consumption, environmental protection and an increase in efficiency. A resultant trend is the substitution of mechanical systems by electrical solutions. A basic requirement is an optimized electrical power supply. During the development of the future electrical power supply, the following changes can be observed: 1) High power components require higher voltages. As a result, multi-voltage electrical power supply systems will appear. 2) Demands for increased availability and reliability require the introduction of state monitoring, redundant paths, components and functions. 3) The relationship between electrical load requirements, deliverable power and fuel consumption, force the introduction of electrical power supply management. These trends will be discussed, and the consequences of a future electrical power supply architecture derived from it.

The continuously increasing performance of modern automotive microelectronics is leading to ever more complex open and closed-loop control functions. Rigid mechanical connections a broken down and electronics applied to make them controllable. Among the examples are camshaft control, or future systems for variable valve-lift control. In addition, the individual systems in the vehicle, such as engine management, transmission-shift control, and ABSR will be networked with one another. The result is a system alliance which communicates through a car-wide web. The major challenge posed by this development in the future, lies in still being able to reliably control the complexity of the system alliance from the point of view of reliability and safety. This means that the suitable sensor and actuator basis, together with an architecture having fixed configuration rulings and matching development methods, are indispensable.

On the basis of the present development process for control-unit functions, this paper sets out to discuss various problem areas which have considerable effect on the quality of the function representation in the control unit, as well as on the development time and the number of recursions. A significant aspect of this is the cooperation between function developers and control-unit developers, where it is shown that problems of language and understanding represent fundamental causes of difficulty. Neither is their always complete harmony in practice in the understanding between developers of methods and tools, and the user who employs these tools. A development process is derived on the basis of this analysis with the primary aim of promoting efficient cooperation between function and control-unit developers, but which will also effectively include method and tool development.