The Future of OBD: Enhanced On-Board Diagnostic System with Remote Access

Peter Subke; Julian Mayer

doi:10.4271/2022-01-0114

Vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers are legally mandated to develop low-emission engine technologies. Type approval for road-vehicles or non-road mobile machines is only granted when the limits for carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC), and particulate matters (PM) are observed. In addition to complying with emission standards, road-vehicles must be equipped with a supervising system (OBD) that monitors emission-related components and detects and indicate divergences from admissible pollutant limits. As of today, emission control systems are required for non-road mobile machinery, but not their monitoring by an OBD system.

This paper starts with a short introduction to the classical OBD system. For more than three decades, OBD serves as an essential part of the environmental protection.

The use of electrical powertrains is increasing and the deployment of combustion engines is nearing its end, not only in passenger cars but also in heavy-duty commercial vehicles and mobile machinery. Although electrically powered vehicles do not need the monitoring of exhaust gas relevant components, the OBD system will not disappear. On the contrary, the OBD system is being expanded and given new tasks. Especially in autonomous road-vehicles and automated mobile machines, an enhanced on-board diagnostic system is indispensable to ensure availability, safety, and security.

Vehicles are connected to the cloud, meaning that there is a wireless connection of the vehicle on the road to a cloud-based system that acquires, analyses and stores data. From this perspective, the question arises as to whether we really still need the insecure, wired OBD Port.

This paper describes components and features of an enhanced on-board diagnostic system that monitors both the emission-related and safety-related functions of autonomous vehicles and automated machines. It comes with a radio data link that replaces the traditional wired OBD Port.

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The Future of OBD: Enhanced On-Board Diagnostic System with Remote Access 2022-01-0114

SAE MOBILUS