Routing of Safety-Relevant Messages in Automotive ECU Networks

Modern cars comprise tens of electronic control units, serving for various purposes like entertainment, driver's comfort or occupant protection. To connect these networked embedded systems inside the car, widespread bus systems like CAN or FlexRay are used, each one offering projecting abilities and specific limitations for certain application areas. In order to point out the suitability of a certain in-car network topology for the transmission of highly time- and safety-critical data content, we investigated effects of routing by a central gateway on the communication delay. In cooperation with the German car manufacturer Audi, we installed a prototype measurement infrastructure and collected meaningful communication data samples for up-to-date and future in-car networks. The results we obtained from the data samples allow for a sophisticated evaluation of the in-car communication network with respect to the demands of time- and safety-critical functions at an early stage of system development. Keywords-Automotive Embedded Systems; ECUs; CAN; FlexRay; In-Car Communication; Safety-Relevant Applications