In-Vehicle Networking – An overview

Module delivered by:

Prof. Ashok.C.Meti
Registrar
CM – Automotive Electronics
MSRSAS-Bangalore
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 Introduction:

• Today's vehicles contain hundreds of

circuits, sensors, and many other
electrical components.
• Communication is needed among the
many circuits and functions of the
vehicle.
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 • In-vehicle networking, also known as multiplexing, is a
method for transferring data among distributed electronic
modules via a serial data bus.
• Without serial networking, inter-module communication
requires dedicated, point-to-point wiring resulting in –
– bulky
The harness weight increased from 4 kg (9
– expensive lb) fifty years ago to between 37 and 91 kg
(81 and 200 lb) in today's vehicles
– complex
– difficult to install wiring harnesses.
• Applying a serial data bus reduces the number of wires by
combining the signals on a single wire through time
division multiplexing.
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 Benefits of Networking
• A decreased number of dedicated wires is
required for each function, and thus reduces
the size of the wiring harness.
• System cost, weight, reliability,
serviceability, and installation are
improved.
• Common sensor data, such as vehicle speed,
engine temperature, etc. are available on the
shared thus
network, so data can be shared,
eliminating the need for redundant sensors.
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 • Networking allows greater vehicle content
flexibility because functions can be added through
software changes.
• Existing systems require an additional module or
additional I/O pins for each function added.
• Car manufacturers are discovering new features
that are enabled by networking.
– For example, the Memory Profile System stores each
driver's preference for ride firmness, seat positions,
steering assist effort, mirror positions, and even radio
station presets.
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 TYPICAL DATABUS NETWORK
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 • Databus technology (Multiplexing) provides cost-
effective and reliable improvements to the main
control and communications systems in the
vehicle:
– Domestic functions (heating, ventilating, lighting,
office on board, entertainment, etc.)
– Information gathering from multiple sensors
– Safety-critical real time functions, including power
train management, ABS, drive-by-wire, stability
control)
– Very high speed real time links, including control of
fuel injection and ignition
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This change has already started: Jaguar ‘S’, ‘X’ Ford Focus all have Multiple Databus Systems
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 Multiplexing Standards
• Proprietary serial buses using generic UART (Universal
Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) or custom devices. (
In the US Big Three -Ford, GM, Chrysler)
• Proprietary protocols pose many difficulties with suppliers
who need many special system designs to conform to the
different protocols.
• Standard protocols allow modules from many suppliers to
easily link together forming a type of `open architecture.'
• An open architecture will allow standardized diagnostic
and emissions testers and will allow suppliers to benefit
from the economies of scale of mass-produced standard
protocol devices.
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 • Many standards such as-
– VAN
– ABUS
– CAN
– Flexray
– MOST
– SAE J1850 have been developed.
• But SAE J1850 and CAN 2.0 (Controller
Area Network) are the predominant
standards.
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 SAE Classification
• To classify the various standards, SAE has defined three basic
categories of in-vehicle networks based on network speed and
functions:
•Low Speed (<10K bits/second)
Class A
•Convenience features (entertainment, audio, trip computer, etc.)

•Medium Speed (10K b/s to 125K b/s)

Class B
•General information transfer (instrument cluster, vehicle speed,
legislated emissions data, etc.)

•High Speed (125K b/s to 1M b/s or greater)

Class C
•Real-time control (powertrain control, vehicle dynamics, brake by
wire, etc.)

#The data travel time, known as latency,

latency is critical for safety and real time control systems,
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because any delays in communication could be disastrous

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 Multiple networks
• Not all networks are created equal.
equal
• The need for speed and low latency are
critical for powertrain control and vehicle
dynamics.
• However, the driver compartment functions
like power windows and instrumentation
only require a speed sufficient to exceed
human perception.
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 • To optimize the costs and control data
access, multiple networks in a single vehicle
are becoming common.
– For example, a CAN network running at 500
Kb/s may link the engine, transmission, and
ABS.
– A slower CAN network or J1850 network
would link the doors, instrumentation, and
other body electronics.
– A gateway would transfer required diagnostic
information between the multiple networks.
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 Vehicle to ground communications
• The intelligent Vehicle needs communication:
– With GPS for Navigation
– With service providers (Navigation, Mayday etc.)
– With broadcast providers (traffic, information, tolling, etc.)
– With Communications providers (Telephone)
– Locate other vehicles (Intelligent Cruise Control, Collision
Avoidance, etc)
• This implies a need for Multiple or Multi-function
Antennae:
– GPS with line of sight to satellites
– GSM multi-band (worse problems in USA)
– Radar/Lidar for Collision avoidance
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 Multiple communication channels
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A potential platform for many services

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 Driver interface
• Drivers are often very busy
• Safety will increasingly depend on managing their
workload:
– Urgency of Messages
– Importance of Messages
– Timing of Messages (e.g. Navigation)
– Filtering/Cutting of Messages (e.g. Advertising)
– Presentation Media (Voice, Display, Light, Instrument
Dial)
– Two-way Opportunities (e.g. Voice Control)
– Model of workload levels
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 Controller Area Network [CAN]
An overview
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 Introduction
• The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a
serial data communications bus for real-
time applications.
• CAN operates at data rates of up to 1
Megabit per second and has excellent error
detection and confinement capabilities.
• CAN was originally developed by the
German company Robert Bosch for use in
the automotive industry
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 • Because of its low cost, reliability and
robustness CAN is now being used in many
other applications.
applications E.g:
– Medical systems
– Aircrafts and Aerospace systems
– Paper making and processing machinery
– Elevator & Escalator control systems
– Building Automation
– Textile production machinery
– Production line control systems and many
more…
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 • Custom built devices and popular
microcontrollers with embedded CAN
controllers are also available.
• There are many CAN-related system
development packages.
• Hardware interface cards and easy to use
software packages provide system
designers, builders and maintainers with a
wide range of design, monitoring, analysis,
and test tools.
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 CAN in Automobiles
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TYPICAL DATABUS NETWORK

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 Sensors in a vehicle
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 ECUs & other systems in a car
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 • The modern cars are using sophisticated electronic
systems such as:
– Anti lock Braking Systems
– Traction Control
– Active Suspension Systems
– Engine Management Systems
– Electronic Power Steering Systems
– Cruise Control
– Central door locking
– Powered seat and mirror controls and may more…
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 The Problems…
• The complexity of these control systems, and the
need to exchange data between them meant that
more and more hard-wired,
wired dedicated signal lines
had to be provided.
• Sensors had to be duplicated if measured
parameters were needed by different controllers.
• Apart from the cost of the wiring looms needed to
connect all these components together, their
physical size sometimes made it impossible to
thread them around the vehicle (to control panels in the
doors, for example).
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 The Solution…
• In mid 1980s, Robert Bosch came out with
CAN specifications.
• Bosch defined the protocol (subsequently
standardized internationally as ISO11898
and ISO 11519-1)
• It also licensed a number of companies to
allow the design and manufacture of CAN
compliant semiconductor controllers and
other devices.
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 Benefits…
• Using the CAN protocol, such controllers, sensors,
and actuators communicate with each other, in real
time, at speeds of up to 1Megabit per second, over
a two wire serial data bus.
In addition, CAN networks:
- are cost effective to design and implement
- will operate in harsh environments
- are easy to configure and modify
- automatically detect data transmission errors
- provide an environment that enables the centralized
diagnosis of faults
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 How CAN works?
Principle
• Data messages transmitted from any node
on a CAN bus do not contain addresses of
either the transmitting node, or of any
intended receiving node.
• Instead, the content of the message (e.g.
Revolutions Per Minute, Hopper Full, X-ray
Dosage, etc.) is labeled by an identifier that
is unique throughout the network.
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 • All other nodes on the network receive the
message and each performs an acceptance
test on the identifier to determine if the
message, and thus its content, is relevant to
that particular node.
• If the message is relevant, it will be
processed;
processed otherwise it is ignored.
ignored
• This mode of operation is known as multi-
cast.
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 Identifiers
• The unique identifier also determines the
priority of the message.
• The lower the numerical value of the
identifier, the higher the priority.
• This allows arbitration if two (or more)
nodes compete for access to the bus at the
same time.
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 • The higher priority message is guaranteed
to gain bus access as if it were the only
message being transmitted.
• Lower priority messages are automatically
re-transmitted in the next bus cycle, or in a
subsequent bus cycle if there are still other,
higher priority messages waiting to be sent.
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 Message Transmission on the CAN bus
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 A Typical Digital Instrument Clusters.
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 CAN Demo Setup
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 Robustness
• CAN uses Non Return to Zero (NRZ) bit encoding
for data communication on a differential two wire
bus.
• The use of NRZ ensures compact messages with a
minimum number of transitions.
• The two wire bus is usually a shielded or
unshielded twisted pair.
pair
• Flat pair (telephone type) cable also performs well
but may cause transmission errors at the highest
speeds.
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 • Coupled with extensive error checking, and
the capability to operate in extremely harsh
environments, a CAN bus using the ISO
specified physical layer implementation will
continue to function even if:
- Either of the two wires in the bus is broken
- Either wire is shorted to power
- Either wire is shorted to ground
- The two wires of the bus are shorted together
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 Network Flexibility and Expansion
• The content-oriented nature of the CAN
addressing scheme delivers a high degree of
flexibility for system configuration.
• New nodes that are purely receivers, and
which need only existing transmitted data,
data
can be added to the network without the
need to make any changes to existing
hardware or software.
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 • Because the transmission protocol does not
addresses CAN supports, to
use destination addresses,
the full, the concept of modular controllers.
controllers
• It allows multi-master capability, multiple
reception,
reception and provides easily for the
synchronization of distributed processes.
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 CAN Message Format
• In a CAN system, data is transmitted and
received using Message Frames.
• Message Frames carry data from a
transmitting node to one or more, receiving
nodes.
• The CAN protocol supports two message
frame formats.
formats
• The two formats are:
- Standard CAN (Version 2.0A)
- Extended CAN (Version 2.0B)
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 2.0A Format
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 A Standard CAN (Version 2.0A) Message Frame consists of
seven different bit fields:
• A Start of Frame (SOF) field. This is a dominant (logic 0)
bit that indicates the beginning of a message frame. The
detection of a dominant bit level at any time during Bus
Idle is interpreted as Start of Frame
• An Arbitration field, containing a 11 bit message identifier
and the Remote Transmission Request (RTR) bit. A
dominant (logic 0), RTR bit indicates that the message is a
Data Frame.
• A recessive (logic 1) value indicates that the message is a
Remote Transmission Request (otherwise known as
Remote Frame.)
• A Remote Frame is a request by one node for data from
some other node on the bus. Remote Frames do not contain
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a Data Field, and the Data Length Code is ignored.

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 • A Control Field containing six bits:
* two dominant bits (r0 and r1) that are reserved for future
use, and
* a four bit Data Length Code (DLC). The DLC indicates
the number of bytes in the Data Field that follows
• A Data Field, containing from zero to a maximum of eight
bytes. As with all bytes in a CAN Message Frame, the
most significant bit of the first (leftmost) data byte is
transmitted first
• The CRC field, containing a fifteen bit cyclic redundancy
check code and a recessive delimiter bit
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 • The ACKnowledge field, consisting of two bits. The first
is the Slot bit which is transmitted as a recessive bit, but is
subsequently over written by dominant bits transmitted
from all other nodes that successfully receive the message.
The second bit is a recessive delimiter bit
• The End of Frame field, consisting of seven recessive bits.
Following the end of a frame is the INTermission field
consisting of three recessive bits. The intermission period
allows all CAN controllers to execute necessary internal
processes in preparation for the next receive or transmit
task. After the three bit INTermission period the bus is
recognised to be free. Bus Idle time maybe of any arbitrary
length including zero.
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 2.0B Format
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 • The CAN 2.0B format provides a twenty
nine (29) bit identifier as opposed to the 11
bit identifier in 2.0A.
• Version 2.0B evolved to provide
compatibility with other serial
communications protocols used in
automotive applications in the USA.
• To cater for this, and still provide
compatibility with the 2.0A format, the
Message Frame in Version 2.0B has an
extended format.
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 2.0A and 2.0B Compatibility
• 2.0B controllers are completely backward
compatible with 2.0A controllers and can transmit
and receive messages in either format.
• However, there are two types of 2.0A controllers:
– The first is capable of transmitting and receiving only
messages in 2.0A format.
format
– With this type of controller, reception of any 2.0B
message will flag an error.
error
– The second type of 2.0A controller (known as 2.0B
passive) is also capable of sending and receiving 2.0A
messages, but in addition, these devices will
acknowledge receipt of 2.0B messages and then ignore
them.
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 • The number of unique identifiers available
to users, on a single 2.0A network, is about
2,000.
2,000
• The number of unique identifiers available
on a 2.0B network is in excess of 500
million!
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 Implementations of CAN

• There are two principal hardware implementations.

implementations
• The first (known as Basic CAN) uses a stand alone
CAN controller interfaced to an existing
microcontroller (for example an 8051.)
• The second (Full CAN) is based on an integrated
CAN controller, CPU interface logic and, usually, a
dual port RAM for intermediate data storage.
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 Network Sizes
• The number of nodes that can exist on a
single network is, theoretically, unlimited.
unlimited
• However, the drive capabilities of currently
available devices imposes some restrictions.
• Currently, and depending on the device
types, up to 32 or 64 nodes per network is
normal.
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 Data Rates
• The rate of data transmission depends on the total
overall length of the bus.
• For all ISO11898 compliant devices the 1Mbit/sec
speed is guaranteed for bus lengths of up to 40
Meters.
• For longer bus lengths, the recommendations are:
– 500 K bits per second to 100 meters (328 ft)
– 250 K bits per second to 200 meters (656 ft)
– 125 K bits per second to 500 meters (1640 ft)
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 Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST)
• MOST is the multimedia standard used for interconnecting multimedia
components in vehicles.
• It is a fiber optic network that provides a very efficient and low-cost
mechanism for transporting high volumes of data.
• It provides a low-overhead and low-cost interface used for
communicating with a wide variety of peripheral devices in the car
environment, like microphones and speakers.
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 Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST)

• It’s topology allows the inclusion of up to 64

devices or nodes.
• Provides plug-n-play feature for easy addition and
removal of devices.
• The total bandwidth (including streaming data and
packed data) is approximately 23 Mbaud.
• 60 channels, 15 MPEG1 channels are available to
the user for configuration.
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 MOST Data Types
• Control data transfer for device specific transfers
and system management.
• This data is transferred in parallel to Real-time and
asynchronous data.

• Bulk Data/ Burst Data transfer in asynchronous

packet with variable Bandwidth requirement.
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 MOST Data Types
• Real-Time data transfer requires a guaranteed
Bandwidth to maintain data quality.
• If real time data is sent to the MOST network, all
nodes have access to it.
• The number of nodes listening to real time data is
only limited to the maximum number of nodes.
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 FlexRay - Introduction
• The core member companies of the FlexRay Consortium
(BMW, Bosch, DaimlerChrysler, Freescale, GM, NXP
Semiconductors and Volkswagen) have been working
together in developing the requirements for an advanced
communication system for future automotive applications.
• FlexRay is a Time-triggered communication system used
for In-vehicle communication systems.
• In time triggered systems, the tasks are executed and
messages are sent according to a predefined schedule.
schedule
• FlexRay activities are aligned to a global time base, unlike
nondeterministic communication protocols such as CAN,
that are mainly event-triggered at run time.
• Therefore, FlexRay is considered as a standard for next
generation of deterministic, high performance automotive
communication networks.
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 Why FlexRay?
• Emerging systems,
systems such as x-by-
wire,
wire collision avoidance and
driver assistance require a network
that delivers very high data rates in
a very predictable and reliable
way.
• MOST can support high data rates,
rates
however it's a network standard
that has been designed specifically
to connect in-vehicle multimedia.
• CAN networks are capable of
connecting several ECUs, however
at a typical data rate of only 500
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Kbps to 1 Mbps.
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 FlexRay comparison with other IVN protocols
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 Benefits of FlexRay
• Increased network throughput.
• Highly deterministic response times.
• Dual channel redundancy.
• System-wide synchronized time base.
• Distributed computing through a global time clock
• Simplified vehicle network architectures.
• Increased enhanced control intelligence.
• Reduced wiring requirements.
• Reduced weight of networked subsystems.
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