Automatic Parameter Identi cation in FlexRay based Automotive Communication Networks

Time-triggered architectures are being introduced in safety-critical automotive systems ("X-by-wire") to cope with the growing complexity and the high safety demands. One of their merits is to provide a static operation schedule, thus largely reducing the complexity of (otherwise input-dependent) execution flow. This, however, comes for the price of increased configuration complexity: the FlexRay protocol that implements the time-triggered paradigm on the communication level requires several tens of configuration parameters. The product of their possible settings spans a space of more than 10M⁴⁸ (theoretical) configurations. This does not represent a problem as long as the configuration is known and fault-free. However, in many cases - ranging from debugging over conformance testing to maintenance - an identification of the configuration is desirable, but turns out extremely burdensome. This paper presents a systematic approach that facilitates parameter identification in such complex systems. Experimental results illustrate the usefulness of our approach and explore its limitations.