Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an

analysis and outlook

Arne Neumann*, Martin Jan Mytych*, Derk Wesemann**, Lukasz

Wisniewski*, and Jürgen Jasperneite***

*inIT - Institute industrial IT, OWL University of Applied Sciences,

D-32657 Lemgo, Germany
**OWITA GmbH, D-32657 Lemgo, Germany
***Fraunhofer Application Center Industrial Automation (IOSB-INA),
D-32657 Lemgo, Germany
{arne.neumann,martin.mytych,lukasz.wisniewski}@hs-owl.de
[email protected]
[email protected]

Abstract. Electrical and electronic systems have been getting raising

importance for innovations in the automotive industry. Networking is-
sues are a key factor in this process since they enable distributed control
functions and user interaction bringing together nodes from different
vendors. This paper analyses available and emerging network technolo-
gies for in-vehicle communication from a requirements driven perspec-
tive. It reviews successful network technologies from other application
areas regarding a possible deployment in vehicular communication and
distinguishes passenger car and commercial vehicle sectors as far as pos-
sible. This contribution is oriented to the OSI reference model showing
the state of the art and future opportunities at the level of the several
communication layers with a focus on physical layer issues and medium
access protocols and including information modeling aspects.

Keywords: in-vehicle networks; Controller Area Network; SAE J1939;

Isobus; BroadR Reach; Reduced Twisted Pair Gigabit Ethernet; Time
Sensitive Networking; OPC UA

1 Introduction

Automotive systems became complex systems of a reasonable number of dis-

tributed electronic control units (ECUs) with even more sensors and actuators
attached. In passenger cars the number of ECUs reached 70, processing about
2500 signal points already ten years ago [1] and their numbers are still growing.
From the late 1980s on standardized serial communication protocols have been
used to interconnect the ECUs and signals. This approach provides several ad-
vantages, including the following. Subsystems of different vendors become able
to interact with each other, sensor data can be shared by different functions
and the number of wires in a vehicle can be reduced in comparison to parallel
2 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

wiring of sensors, actuators and ECUs, which results in less costs for material
and assembling, less weight and hence less fuel consumption of the vehicle.
There are many and various application functions utilizing the communi-
cation infrastructure of vehicles and new functions are evolving. For example,
driver assistance systems improve towards autonomous driving, with truck pla-
tooning as a use case being deployed soon [2]. These functions impose require-
ments to both in-vehicle and car-to-X communication, where this paper focuses
on in-vehicle networks. The application functions require different characteris-
tics of the communication systems. For example, functions for driver assistance
have a priority on determinism and functional safety, whereas other functional-
ity, such as infotainment, has a priority on data throughput. As a consequence
the communication structure consists of interconnected subsystems of heteroge-
neous technologies, which will be analyzed in this paper and opportunities for
improvements will be discussed.
In other industries Ethernet-based technologies have been introduced success-
fully. For example in the industrial automation domain, Ethernet-based real-time
protocols have been standardized and deployed in applications, where fieldbus
protocols were used before. This development was primarily motivated by better
capabilities for network management, maintainability and communication per-
formance. In IEEE there are currently activities to specify extensions to the lower
layers of the Ethernet protocol which may support its utilization at in-vehicle
networks. The paper also aims to analyze where and under which conditions
Ethernet-based technologies including their currently developed extensions can
support in-vehicle communication and how a migration could be done.
This paper reviews the requirements for communication networks in the do-
mains of passenger cars and of commercial vehicles. It gives an overview of avail-
able technologies and discusses their applicability in commercial vehicles. The
focus of the paper will be on network technologies, which enable a broad range
of vehicular applications while technologies for specialized applications will be
only briefly dealt.

2 In-vehicle networks

2.1 Automotive networks and topologies

Vehicular networks started with the controller area network (CAN, ISO 11989-
2), developed in 1983 and presented in 1987, defining layers 1 and 2 of the
OSI reference model [3]. It basically offers a linear bus topology, which greatly
reduces the wiring efforts in cars. In addition to CAN as a universal solution,
other vehicular communication systems have been developed for more specialized
applications. The local interconnect network (LIN, ISO 17987-1 to -7) focuses
on small networks mainly for discrete I/O signals with low bandwidth require-
ments. LIN implements a master-slave-topology offering a low-cost, single wire
solution compared to CAN-enabled devices. In the other direction, FlexRay was
introduced 2000, offering benefits over CAN in means of bandwidth, real-time
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 3

capability, redundancy and functional safety. The driving aspect was the advent
of X-by-wire technologies, which needed a higher reliability and safety rating.
FlexRay offers a redundant connection between nodes and supports both star
and bus topology. The ability to support time-critical closed loop control appli-
cation in conjunction the resulting higher cost and complexity of the components
has preferred FlexRay’s usage to engine, steering and advanced driver assistance
systems (ADAS). Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) was developed
exclusively for telematics and multimedia applications and is utilized only in
the infotainment system. Comprehensive surveys about the outlined network
technologies can be found in the literature [4], [3], [5], [6].
These core standards are still a subject for improvements. For example for
CAN there are SAE J2284/3 (High-Speed CAN for Vehicle Applications at 500
kbit/s) aiming at high transmission rate and higher allowable node count, and
SAE J2411 (Single Wire CAN Network for Vehicle Applications) providing a
simplified variant for low requirements regarding bit rate, bus length and ro-
bustness. As a disadvantage, sometimes compatibility issues arise, such as for
CAN FD (flexible data-rate) [7].
Upon these communication layers, a number of protocols and standards have
been developed for network control and data exchange. For CAN, this includes
general purpose protocols like ISO 11898-4 (TTCAN, Time-Triggered Commu-
nication on CAN), industry-specific protocols like CANopen, SAE J1939 and
ISOBUS [4] [3] and protocols for special purpose vehicles, mainly derived from
CANopen like EnergyBus (pedelecs, E-bikes), CleANopen (municipal vehicles)
and FireCAN (DIN 14700, for external firefighter equipment). LIN does not com-
prise diverse higher layer protocols, but is most often terminated with a gateway
to connect to an overlying CAN network. FlexRay, as a safety-critical subsys-
tem, allows a diagnostic function via gateway, but also includes no diverse higher
layer protocols. An outstanding application layer protocol is On-board Diagnos-
tic (OBD) specifying self-diagnostic and reporting capability to assist the vehicle
owner and repair technician. The development of OBD began in the 1980s driven
by legal requirements for continuous emission surveillance during the entire life-
time of a vehicle. There are several standards for OBD, some of them contain
both protocol and data object definitions. At the beginning ISO 14230 (Road ve-
hicles - Diagnostic communication over K-Line, DoK-Line) gain importance, also
known as KWP2000 and referring to ISO 15031-5 (Road vehicles - Communica-
tion between vehicle and external equipment for emissions-related diagnostics).
Its CAN-based version ISO 15765-3 (Road vehicles - Diagnostic communication
over Controller Area Network, DoCAN) has been widely implemented but never
released by ISO. The most recent standard for OBD is ISO 14229 (Road ve-
hicles - Unified diagnostic services, UDS). It focuses on application data and
services, decoupling them from the lower layers. UDS provides data and services
with the same semantics as the ODB standards based on KWP2000 and extend
them but the representation is not compatible. This collection is not complete,
there are additional standards about OBD, such as definitions by SAE or about
communication to external equipment.
4 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

The different areas of preferred application for each bus system has led to a
heterogeneous network structure, so far with only few needs for interconnection;
each segment is mainly designed to work standalone, exchanging mainly status
information with other networks. Nowadays the bus segments are usually con-
nected by a centralized gateway. A typical network architecture is shown in figure
1, while additional topology examples can be found in [3]. Other approaches fo-
cus on the introduction of backbone networks for different application areas and
different positions in the vehicle as described in [8] and [5].

Fig. 1. Typical vehicular network architecture

Almost all available literature about vehicular network architectures aims at

passenger cars, while the commercial vehicles sector is inadequately represented
in the related work.

2.2 Communication requirements and applications

With more driver assistance, autonomous driving and other integral function-
ality, there are variable applications demanding information exchange between
the ECUs, sensors and actuators. These applications also require diverse qual-
ities of service, mainly determined by the update rate of information. In [9]
update interval requirements at commercial vehicles are given, such as tire pres-
sure: 10 s, battery current: 1 s, cruise control information: 100 ms and electronic
transmission controller information: 10 ms. This fact of variable requirements
in conjunction with the large number of communication nodes and the limited
bus capacities led to a functional separation of bus segments into subsystems.
The most typical subsystems comprise the power train bus (engine and gear
control), the chassis system (e.g. anti-lock brake system) and driver assistance
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 5

(e.g. electronic stability program), the body and comfort electronics (e.g. air
condition), and the infotainment (audio and navigation). The power train bus
needs to be generally accessible for diagnostics including emission monitoring to
fulfill legal regulations, while all other bus system diagnostics is depending on
manufacturer-specific tools.
The requirements imposed by the applications on the communication net-
work comprise determinism, fault tolerance, data throughput and functional
safety. Security requirements have to be managed for components, which grant
access from outside components. This becomes a raising issue since car-to-X
communication and infotainment connectivity pose growing challenges. In [10]
an overview about the subsystems and their priorities of communication require-
ments is given. Table 1 extracted from this source summarizes the assignment
of the different requirements to the subsystems.

Table 1. Automotive subsystems and their major requirements acc. to [10]

Fault
Determinism Bandwidth Flexibility Security
tolerance

Chassis YES YES SOME NO NO

Airbag YES YES SOME NO NO

Powertrain SOME YES YES SOME NO

Body and
NO SOME SOME YES NO
comfort

X-by-wire YES YES SOME NO NO

Multimedia /
NO SOME YES YES NO
Infotainment

Wireless /
NO SOME SOME YES YES
Telematics

Diagnostics NO SOME NO YES YES

An advantage of the segmented topology is, that dependability of the com-

munication for critical applications can be achieved by taking into account only
a small number of components interconnected by a single segment. Additionally,
every single bus segment can be configured in a way that is exactly matching
the specific application requirements. On the other hand, the application func-
tions of the vehicles become more complex and require information exchange
across several bus segments. The therefore necessary communication paths in-
volve segment transitions, which lead to an additional, resource demanding load
for those ECUs acting as gateways between the bus segments. The number of
cross-segment functions and gateways influences the efficiency of the overall net-
work topology.
6 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

2.3 Influences by upcoming power concepts on in-vehicle networks

Vehicles like heavy duty road trains, buses and equipment for forestry and agri-
culture are characterized by a big number of auxiliary aggregates. These aux-
iliaries comprise compressors, fans, hydraulic pumps for servo-assisted steering,
lifts etc. Nowadays they are usually driven directly by the combustion engine.
The available power budget is coupled to the speed of the engine and cannot be
steered on demand. Therefore the aggregates have to be scaled in a way that
they can be operated at low engine speed. As a consequence, weight and size
of the aggregates raise, decreasing the efficiency of the vehicle and resulting in
a higher fuel consumption. In contrast to this, electrically powered drives al-
low a flexible power supply management which can adjust the power to operate
an aggregate depending on the individual demand. Hence, the introduction of
electric drives for the auxiliaries has a high potential to increase their efficiency.
An accompanying effect of this concept is a significant increase of the number of
communication nodes and signal points of the in-vehicle network, since the power
management will require information exchange among the electrically powered
auxiliaries and between the auxiliaries and other vehicle equipment. In contrast
to the passenger cars with a mostly static configuration, in the context of com-
mercial vehicles the communication topology is more dynamic due to the often
changing of truck/trailer or tractor/implement combinations. Especially upon
the initial composition of such a combination the exchange of device descrip-
tions of the auxiliaries can become necessary which will cause a high amount
of data to be transferred. Even this scenario does not happen very often, it
is a some minutes lasting procedure when realized by conventional in-vehicle
networks. Additionally there is the challenge of introducing many instances of
the same or at least of a similar device type to the vehicle network. This op-
portunity will become important especially for modular devices and it shows a
lack of scalability of the current communication standards. Requirements com-
ing from this use case may exceed not only the number of physical nodes but
also the number of logical addresses of a network segment when the modules
shall be addressed individually. Another issue is about the information model.
The standardized information models for commercial vehicles, for example SAE
J1939 [9] describe only the common available data objects and do not allow a
dynamic management of the object pool. Currently, additional objects can only
be described in a proprietary way, which increases the engineering effort for the
information exchange.

3 Physical Layer aspects

In this chapter, the state of the art technologies which are most widespread in
the automotive domain will be described. These are CAN (ISO 11989-2) for the
passenger car sector and SAE J1939 as a CAN-based adaptation for the com-
mercial vehicle sector. In contrast to this, a state of the art technology which is
widespread in other domains will be introduced, Ethernet 100BASE-TX. Rele-
vant criteria are robustness, bit rate, number of nodes, network extension and
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 7

topology in order to fulfill application requirements on fault tolerance, band-

width and scalability. With Ethernet 100BASE-T1 and Ethernet 1000BASE-T1
two emerging technologies will be described, which are promising candidates to
enable Ethernet based protocols on a physical layer being as simple and reliable
as nowadays solutions.
Currently used in-vehicle networks have different physical layer character-
istics because of their design and application area. Upcoming technologies and
concepts like ADAS or in-vehicle power concepts require network systems with a
higher bandwidth to handle the amount of data. Ethernet is generally regarded
as a next in-vehicle network for future development. A comparison of physical
layer characteristic between CAN and Ethernet is shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Physical layer characteristic of CAN and Ethernet based communication

BroadR-
Ethernet Ethernet
Reach R
CAN 2.0 SAE J1939 100BASE- 1000BASE-
(100BASE-
TX T1
T1)

Standardi- IEEE 802.3

ISO 11898-2 SAE J1939 IEEE 802.3bw IEEE 802.3bp
zation Clause 25

Possible
bus bus star star star
topologies

Max. transfer
1 Mbit/s 250 kbit/s 100 Mbit/s 100 Mbit/s 1 Gbit/s
speed

Max. cable 40 m for

40 m 100 m 15 m 15 m
length 1 Mbit/s

copper, copper, 2 copper, single copper, single

Transmission copper, twisted
shielded unshielded unshielded unshielded
media pair
twisted pair twisted pair twisted pair twisted pair

Typical CAN applications range from engine control and diagnostics to com-
fort electronics, with different bandwidths being employed. Typically, the range
below 125 kbit/s is regarded as low-speed CAN oder CAN B, and the range
from 125 kbit/s up to 1 Mbit/s is regarded as high-speed CAN, or CAN C.
The CAN A class defines a bandwidth of 10 kbit/s or lower, historically used
for diagnostic purposes. The maximum line length is depending on the chosen
bandwidth. This limitation arises from the propagation time of the signal on the
medium combined with the need for CAN to sample the received data exactly
bit-synchronously. All bus nodes need to see the same bit value at the same
point in time. Fault-tolerance is achieved by the use of differential signaling and
the insertion of stuff-bits after 5 consecutive identical bit values, guaranteeing a
state transition occurrence for synchronization. For commercial vehicle, the Soci-
ety of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines a communication protocol standard
named J1939. It uses CAN as physical layer and is widely in use. Compared to
CAN 2.0, SAE J1939 sets some limitations for the physical layer. The standard
defines a maximum transfer speed of 250 kbit/s with a maximum cable length
8 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

of 40 meters, being below the allowed rating of up to 1 Mbit/s on 40 m distance

for CAN, and a bus topology with a maximum number of 30 physical nodes.
However, new technologies and concepts need an enhancement of the phys-
ical layer. Nowadays, Ethernet is a widely used point to point communication
technology. With 100BASE-TX it is possible to transfer data with 100 Mbit/s
over a maximum cable length of 100 meters. Due to the requirements on elec-
tromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI) in the
automotive market, Ethernet 100BASE-TX could not be used as an in-vehicle
communication network. In addition to that limitation, 100BASE-TX uses 2 un-
shielded twisted pair cable, which would increase the overall cable weight and
cost. To compensate the disadvantages of Ethernet in physical layer for automo-
tive, new PHY’s are ready for operation or in development. BroadR-Reach R
sup-
ports 100 Mbit/s transfer speed over a single unshielded twisted pair cable which
meets automotive EMI requirements [11] and is standardized as 100BASE-T1 in
IEEE 802.3bw-2015 [12]. BroadR-Reach R
has been used in a real-time Ethernet
in-car backbone project, where BroadR-Reach R
became a part of the Ethernet
backbone system [13]. Also the applicability of BroadR-Reach for use with an
industrial Ethernet protocol has been approved in [14]. But future challenges
like uncompressed video for ADAS would need more bandwidth [15]. Hence,
the next generation for Ethernet in the automotive field is under development.
The standardization of a 1000BASE-T1 PHY in IEEE 802.3bp is currently in
progress [16]. The 1000BASE-T1 PHY supports a maximum transfer speed of
1 Gbit/s in full duplex mode over a single unshielded twisted pair cable with a
maximum length of 15 meters. First PHY’s on the basis of IEEE802.3bp draft
are introduced [17]. Another point for the trend of Ethernet as in-vehicle com-
munication system is the possibility to support voltage and current levels over
a single twisted pair Ethernet link. Currently the 1-Pair Power over Data Lines
(PoDL) Task Force defines under IEEE802.3bu a standard for that feature [18].
The deployment of these Ethernet based physical layers in the commercial ve-
hicle sector is more challenging in comparison to passenger cars. A main reason
is the topology extent beyond 15 meters which requires components for signal
refreshing. Beside this, the harsher environment induces higher requirements for
ingress protection and overall robustness of connectors and may cause signal
refreshing too.

4 Medium Access Control aspects

Medium access control is most relevant to fulfill application requirements on de-

terminism, transmission latency and data throughput. Here, the data link layer
methods for medium access control of CAN and Ethernet as state of the art tech-
nologies will be briefly discussed. Time sensitive networking (TSN) targets to the
real-time capability of Ethernet. Relevant TSN specifications will be described,
as they can contribute to cover a broad range of vehicular requirements.
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 9

4.1 State of the art protocols

CAN specifies an asynchronous, event based medium access protocol. The com-
munication is message-oriented, with a given identifier being assigned to a certain
information, but not to a specific device. The number of devices on a bus is the-
oretically not limited, while the number of possible message identifiers depends
on the their length. Two types of identifiers, 11 bit and 29 bit, are available
to choose. CAN follows the Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Resolution
(CSMA/CR) scheme, where each network node is allowed to send data when it
detects an idle state at the medium. The messages are prioritized by their iden-
tifier, i.e. in case of conflicts an arbitration occurs and the message coming up
with the higher order identifier being sent successfully. The arbitration reduces
the number of retries and avoids a stop of data transfer due to congestions [3].
Although CSMA/CR represents a non-deterministic method, determinism can
be reached for messages holding the highest priority. To fulfill application re-
quirements on latency of transmission, a serious engineering effort regarding the
assignment of priorities and update intervals of data objects is necessary and
simulation and test of the network configuration is recommended. A detailed
analysis about schedulability in CAN Networks is provided in [19].
The IEEE 802.1 Ethernet standard utilizes Carrier Sense Multiple Access
with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) for medium access and was originally not
designed to transport any time sensitive traffic and hence does not provide de-
terminism. After introduction of the IEEE 802.1Q, providing the possibility to
assign a defined priority level to a particular message by using the Virtual LAN
(VLAN) field, many proprietary industrial protocols were developed, e.g. Eth-
ernet/IP, PROFINET RT, SERCOS and many other, which were build upon
this feature. Due to limits of the priority based communication, some additional
functionalities to further improve the real-time efficiency were introduced. These
are: TDMA based communication (e.g. PROFINET IRT), polling based com-
munication (Powerlink) or summation frame communication (EtherCAT). All
mentioned approaches, allow to achieve high real-time performance, however it
require modification of the original IEEE Ethernet MAC [20]. Beside this devel-
opment of industrials protocols for Ethernet to transfer sensitive traffic a pool
of establishments from the automotive area, like BMW and Daimler AG, de-
veloped a in-vehicle communication protocol, known as FlexRay, to handle the
requirements like real-time communication.

4.2 Time Sensitive Networking

Due to the rapid evolution of the IT technology, especially the entertainment

sector, such as high quality audio and video streaming, demands for real-time
communication followed to the establishment of a new IEEE working group,
Audio Video Bridging (AVB). The aim was to further enhance the real-time
capabilities of the Ethernet standard. The suitability of AVB for particular ve-
hicular use cases already has been proven by simulation [21]. Due to the high
10 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

interest of the industry in this activity, the focus of the group has been broad-
ened by including industrial application requirements [22]. At the same time, the
name of the working group has been changed to more generic Time Sensitive
Networking (TSN). An important aspect for this activity was to offer low costs
devices, which require a minimal configuration effort to achieve plug-and-play
functionality [23]. In case of in-vehicle communication, the plug-and-play func-
tionality is not of major importance. It is due to the fact that in opposite to the
industrial automation, in cars, the installed in-vehicle network infrastructure re-
mains unchanged. More important is the spectrum of traffic classes that can be
supported by the TSN technology. It allows to satisfy demands in terms of high
throughput required by multimedia or infotainment systems, but also provide
high determinism and availability, thus enabling support of control loops and
safety critical functions. Having one system supporting different traffic flows,
would help to significantly reduce the complexity of the current in-car commu-
nication infrastructures, and open the possibility for the future functionalities,
such as highly sophisticated ADAS. The focus of TSN is very broad, therefore
multiple sub-groups has been established to deal with a particular aspect. The
most relevant for in-car communication are listed below:

– Timing and synchronization aspects:

• timing and synchronization IEEE 802.1.AS
– Quality of service aspects and resource reservation:
• stream reservation protocol IEEE 802.1Qat and the further extension
IEEE 802.1Qcc
• path control and reservation mechanisms IEEE 802.1Qca
– Forwarding and queuing mechanisms
• forwarding and queuing enhancements for Time-Sensitive streams IEEE
802.1Qav
• deterministic communication through time aware shaper IEEE 802.1Qbv
and cycling queuing and forwarding shaper IEEE 802.1Qch
• frame pre-emption IEEE 802.1Qbu
– Reliability
• seamless redundancy IEEE 802.1CB
• redundancy mechanisms included in IEEE 802.1Qca

There are several papers currently available, which try to evaluate some of the
TSN amendments in the in-car communication context. In [24], authors investi-
gated the worst case behavior of three different shapers, namely Burst Limiting
Shaper (BLS), Time Aware Shaper (TAS) and Peristaltic Shaper (PS) using
analytical calculation and simulation. According to the authors in [24], the best
performance in terms of latency and latency jitter had the TAS, however require
a lot of configuration efforts. BLS offers a compromise between performance and
configuration efforts. The PS offers the easiest configuration, however the worst
performance as comparing to other shapers. An additional deep investigation
of the worst case latency provided by BLS in a typical automotive setup was
conducted in [25]. Authors shown that in some cases it is better to use the IEEE
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 11

802.1Q than TSN + BLS. In order to efficiently use BLS some additional fil-
tering functionality is required. The same authors analysed the effect of TSN
with frame preemption (IEEE 802.3br) to worst-case end-to-end latency in [26].
Their experiments in a typical automotive setup show, that latency guarantees
for time-critical traffic can be significantly improved while preemptable traffic
only slightly degrades. In [27], authors investigated bandwidth allocation ra-
tio for the scheduled traffic (IEEE 802.1Qbv), while adjusting the Maximum
Transmit Unit (MTU). They have shown that using two time sensitive flows it
is possible to achieve cycle times of 250µs for the MTU size of 109 bytes. A
survey in [28] provide a broad overview about the Ethernet-based communica-
tion with the focus on IEEE AVB. It discusses especially the scheduled traffic
and presents simulation results, where offset scheduling TAS were combined to
achieve an temporal isolation from other kinds of traffic. The fault-tolerance
aspects of TSN were investigated in [29]. Authors compared two different ap-
proaches aiming to guarantee seamless redundancy. They pointed out that the
current seamless redundancy mechanisms provided by TSN lacks of flexibility
in terms of stream reconfiguration and mechanisms for automatic stream reser-
vation. Despite of all advantages, TSN increases the configuration overhead of
a network. In [30] an ontology-based approach to support automatic network
configuration of TSN is presented. The authors demonstrated the approach by
modeling the TAS and came to the conclusion that the expressiveness of the
ontology has to be further investigated. The several papers demonstrate that
TSN is actually in focus, but it also shows a gap in the field of implementation
to simulate the behavior of TSN. An easily accessible implementation of single
protocols would be a benefit to gain insight of TSN and whose performance.
After all it can be concluded that TSN is a prominent candidate for in-vehicle
communication to handle future requirements. It supports different real-time
classes, offers determinism and high reliability via seamless redundancy.
As a wrap-up of this chapter, table 3 gives a summary about the access
methods of the discussed communication technologies.

Table 3. Summary on medium access methods

CAN Ethernet TSN

Basic access
CSMA/CR CSMA/CD CSMA/CD
protocol

Additional priority based

– scheduling
measures arbitration

Determinism restricted no yes

12 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

5 Transport protocol and efficiency aspects

In this chapter, the considerations are mainly driven by the application require-
ment of bandwidth. The state-of the-art technologies are compared regarding
their performance to transfer different qualities of user data. For this communi-
cation layer no emerging technology is discussed, but new mappings with estab-
lished protocols at higher layers open future opportunities.
The standard ISO 11898 for CAN does not specify higher protocol layers of
the OSI reference model. CAN is limited to a maximum data object length of 8
octets and provides message oriented broadcasting without address information
about the sender and receiver. This simplicity enables a small protocol overhead
and allows short transmission times. Consequently, user data rates of approxi-
mately 7,5 KB/s for 1 octet payload and approximately 28 KB/s for 8 octets
payload are possible, supposing a bus workload of 100 %, according to [3] and
[31]. Although this throughput statement is not very impressive, it is sufficient
for many applications regarding the update intervals of the required number of
communication objects. In the domain of commercial vehicles, the widespread
standard SAE J1939 defines transport protocols for segmented transport for both
message-oriented broadcasts and node-oriented unicasts on top of the CAN lay-
ers. The transport protocols define an initial frame to announce the transmission
and the user data length of a data frame is reduced to 7 by taking the first octet
of the CAN payload for protocol information. The protocols shall not strongly
interfere in the plain message exchange, therefore the standard defines a low
CAN priority and a minimum frame gap of 50 ms. All these measures reduce
the user data rate to below 140 bit/s and limit the application range to very low
demanding functions.
While CAN based protocols show constraints which the upper limit of the
payload size, Ethernet based protocols show a lack of efficiency considering the
lower limit of the payload size. The payload size of an Ethernet frame is defined
from 42 to 1500 octets, if the VLAN tag is used. When transferring control
data of sensors and actuators, the user data length often will be between 1 and
4 octets and the remaining payload size needs to be filled by padding octets.
Considering the overall Ethernet protocol overhead and the inter frame gap the
gross ratio of net data becomes 1:84 for a single octet. When using a Ethernet
bit rate of 100 Mbit/s, the net data rate in this worst case is still above 1 Mbit/s,
again supposing a network load of 100 %, which is significantly higher than CAN
communication.
Consequently, the substitution of CAN based protocols by Ethernet based
protocols can overcome bandwidth limitations for in-vehicle communication when
transferring big sized data objects. In [32] an approach is published, where the
SAE J1939 application protocols are mapped on top of a TCP/UDP stack. The
authors claim the applicability for the power train segment in heavy duty vehicle
networks, which still needs further investigation. Nevertheless, this contribution
shows, that a changeover to more powerful network technologies is possible with-
out essential modifications at the application interface.
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 13

6 Information model aspects

In this section, a well established information model of the commercial vehicle

domain is discussed. To enable the easy integration of future application func-
tion a possible extension of this model, which preserves the existing application
interface, is described in the second subsection.

6.1 Consideration about available information models

The application layer protocol standards for in-vehicle communication SAE

J1939 and ISO 11783, which are nowadays the mostly utilized standards for
commercial vehicles, contain detailed information models to address vehicle com-
ponents and their parameters. For example, one part of SAE J1939 comprehen-
sively specifies parameters concerning typical components (e.g. engine, steering,
collision sensors) and functions (e.g. speed control, air suspension control, af-
tertreatment) of an vehicle. The parameter description includes the unambigu-
ous parameter identifier, information about name and acronym, data type, data
range, affiliation to records for transmission and update intervals. This docu-
ment provides a valuable contribution for the interoperability of the typical,
widespread components and functions. On the other hand, the approach of SAE
J1939 is difficult to manage in case of extending the model for new information
object types or even for adding new instances of already existing object types.
Currently such a extensibility is rarely required, but upcoming application con-
cepts like introducing modular electrical drives for auxiliaries will tighten the
problem.

6.2 Potential future information models

An object oriented modeling of application specific information structures can be

used to improve the rigid information modeling provided by the current technolo-
gies for in-vehicle communication. OPC UA, a technology widely used mainly
in the domain of industry automation, provides such an object oriented model-
ing. Currently, the OPC UA specification is being enhanced by PubSub, a new
communication pattern according to the publisher/subscriber model enabling so
called server based subscriptions [33]. In IEC 62541-3 the Address Space Model
of OPC UA is defined. It can be considered as a meta model providing objects
as the basis for any information model. The object elements are represented
by nodes. These nodes comprise variables, methods or references to other ob-
jects. Additionally, IEC 62541-5 specifies nodes to be used for diagnostics and
as entry points to server-specific nodes. As a result, an information model of an
”empty” server is defined and the vendor of the component which is represented
by the OPC server can customize it. As optional specification elements, prede-
fined models for data access, alarms, history and others are available. Moreover,
the information model can be changed during runtime of the server by adding or
removing nodes. By this means, the OPC UA information model is independent
14 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook

from transport protocols and enable domain specific extendibility. For the de-
ployment in in-vehicle networks, OPC UA needs the ability to be implemented
on physical nodes with low resources. For this reason, OPC UA components need
to be scaled down. In order to support this, the OPC UA specifications provide
profiles, for example the OPC UA Nano Embedded device profile. Based on this
profile, it is possible to scale down an OPC UA server to 15 kB RAM and 10 kB
ROM [34], thus allowing implementation at the chip level of a resource limited
device such as a sensor or an actuator.
To provide interoperability beyond this general information model and to ease
the use of OPC UA in several domains, Companion Standards have been devel-
oped. For example, the specifications for building automation (in co-operation
with BACnet), energy systems and management (participating in IEC TC 57
”Power systems”) or railways transportation shows that OPC UA already has
been approached by applications outside the industrial automation. The uti-
lization of the OPC UA Address Space Model as a wrapper of data models
provided by the in-vehicle communication standards could be a step ahead to
the required extendibility of the models. The existing information structures can
be preserved and transformed into an object oriented approach as it is shown in
[35] for building automation. At the same time the co-existence with information
models of upcoming components and functions, which are not covered by the
available standards in the vehicle domain, becomes possible. For example, SAE
J1939 data in parallel to data according to the standard CAN in Automation
DS402 for electric drives could be modeled and transferred on the same network.

7 Conclusion

This paper shows the current status of in-vehicle communication networks in

the field of passenger cars as well as for commercial and heavy duty vehicle, and
points at upcoming challenges. It depicts the future of Ethernet as in-vehicle
communication system related to several parts of the OSI reference model. In
summary, Ethernet will take place in the automotive market, see also [36]. How-
ever, ongoing developments and implementations show, that new network sys-
tems will not immediately replace, but rather supplement them. This strategy
is beneficial especially for critical systems, where proven-in-use concepts con-
tribute to the functional safety.The evolution of automotive Ethernet, according
to [8], propose the implementation of Ethernet in three generations. The first
generation already exist in high class vehicles. It uses 100BASE-TX Ethernet
with Diagnostics over IP (DoIP) for on-board diagnostics and ECU’s updates.
Figure 2 given by the author of [37] illustrates the next generations. Second gen-
eration uses Ethernet as additional in-vehicle network to transfer the amount of
data from camera systems for drive assistance and infotainment. Finally, the 3rd
generation with the possibility to transfer 1 Gbit/s will implement Ethernet as a
backbone system and change automotive wiring harness from heterogeneous to
hierarchical homogeneous network by introducing a new network topology level.
 Approaches for in-vehicle communication – an analysis and outlook 15

Fig. 2. Future architecture with Ethernet backbone acc. to [37]

In future, Ethernet in connection with TSN will be a possible approach for

time relevant communication beside ADAS and infotainment. At the layer of
information modeling, concepts incorporating dynamic and instantiable infor-
mation object presentation like OPC UA can support the integration of new
application functions.

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