Migrating to Ethernet-Based Centralized Automotive Architectures

Abstract

Automotive Electrical/Electronics architectures of modern vehicles are currently going through a large shift from distributed to centralized systems. As the number of software features grows and the desire to be user-configurable is becoming ever more important, manufacturers are moving towards flexible centralized platforms. Many new technologies are being used to enable this shift to centralization, such as Automotive Ethernet. Using a workbench constructed with state of the art hardware as a testing platform, an investigation into the process of migrating Electronic Control Unit software from CAN-based distributed architectures into centralized architectures with CAN-FD and Automotive Ethernet as their primary networks was performed. An analysis of how Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) extensions can be used to provide real-time capabilities within automotive Ethernet networks is presented. Further, a partial assurance case is constructed for a system using TSN's Time Aware Shaper to provide time-triggered real-time communication. It is intended for use by system designers to assist in the safety analysis of systems using TSN.