The impact of time-triggered communication in automotive embedded systems

Modern premium vehicles contain up to 70 electrical control units (ECUs) connected by several communication systems to support innovative car features required in a competitive industry. Nowadays automotive engineers explore the applicability of time-triggered (TT) field bus systems in comparison to already established pure event-triggered (ET) communication systems in mass-production vehicles. TT-communication differs significantly from ET-systems by requiring an essential a priori knowledge of application specific requirements to guarantee a suitable design. This paper is focused on the relationship between application specific design goals for long-term electrical/electronic (EE) system deployment and the network design of a TT-automotive communication system. The content is motivated by FlexRay as the most relevant TT technology currently denote dependencies of FlexRaytrade system configurations to developed by the automotive community.