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Future applications in the domain of chassis control and powertrain control require a level of availability and reliability of the communication system as well as an increased amount of data bandwidth and data size per message which can not be met with the current state of the art. The joint development of the “FlexRay” standard by BMW, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Motorola, Philips and Robert Bosch GmbH focuses on these needs. The consortium combines the necessary expertise and technical knowledge to establish this future protocol for in-vehicle communication. The paper describes the basic features of the protocol and their benefits for the system design of the automotive industry.

Connecting microcontrollers, sensors and actuators by several communication systems is state of the art within the electronic architectures of modern vehicles. The communication among these components is widely based on the event triggered communication on the Controller-Area-Network (CAN) protocol. The arbitrating mechanism of this protocol ensures that all messages are transferred according to the priority of their identifiers and that the message with the highest priority will not be disturbed. In the future some mission critical subnetworks within the upcoming generations of vehicle systems, e.g. x-by-wire systems (xbws), will additionally require deterministic behavior in communication during service. Even at maximum bus load, the transmission of all safety related messages must be guaranteed. Moreover it must be possible to determine the point of time when the message will be transmitted with high precision.