Verification and analysis of dependable automotive communication systems based on HW/SW co-simulation

The introduction of FlexRay in the automotive industry as well as the standardization efforts for the hardware and software architecture rise different challenges: How to efficiently integrate the new services in the system, how to validate the communication architecture with respect to the effects influencing the network? The research project TEODACS aims at answering these questions. We present in this document a new validation approach for the communication architecture based on the simulation of the entire FlexRay network within a co-simulation framework. This environment largely reduces the processing resources required for simulation and thus makes the analysis of such complex system possible.