Hyung-Taek Lim (BMW Group Forschung und Technik): Real-Time Communication in an IP/Ethernet-based In-Car Network

In current vehicles, a large number of control units are connected by several automotive specific communication busses such as CAN, FlexRay, LIN and MOST facilitating innovative distributed applications. At the same time, computers and entertainment devices use IP and commodity communications technology like Ethernet to connect to the Internet, allowing for innovative solutions and maintaining fast innovation cycles. Today, one can see first applications of Ethernet for in-vehicle communication in contemporary cars. In next generation vehicles, many innovative applications could benefit from the increased bandwidth Ethernet can offer. 

However, legacy Ethernet does only provide very limited Quality-of-Service (QoS) mechanisms so that demanding real-time in-vehicle applications cannot meet their constraints. The Audio/Video Bridging (AVB) group introduced several IEEE standards to allow audio and video applications with high QoS demands in a switched Ethernet network. Although these mechanisms were not designed for automotive use cases, they could be used for in-vehicle communication.

In this talk, an overview of the current communication busses is given and the vision of future in-car network is described. Furthermore, the research works related to the performance evaluation of a switched Ethernet in-car network with different QoS mechanisms are presented.

Slides