Rapid automotive bus system synthesis based on communication requirements

The complexity of modern cars and along their electric/electronic architecture (EEA), rapidly increased during the last years. New applications like driver assistance systems are highly distributed over the network of hardware components. More and more systems share common sensors placed in sensor clusters. This leads to a greater number of mutually connected electronic control units (ECUs) and bus systems. The traditional domain specific approach of grouping connatural ECUs into one bus system, does not necessarily lead to an overall optimal EEA design. We developed a method to automatically determine a network structure based on the communication requirements of ECUs. Based on the EEA model, which is developed during the vehicle development life-cycle, we have all the information we need, like cycle times and data width, to build a network of automotive bus systems. We integrated our method into the EEA tool PREEvision to allow rapid investigation of realization alternatives. The relocation of functions from one ECU to another can ideally be supported by our method, since we can generate a new network structure within minutes, fitting the new communication demands.