On Hardware Implementation of Flexray Bus Guardian Module

FlexRay is a new standard of communication between electronic devices installed in a vehicle. The protocol is based on mechanisms known from telecommunication networks coupled with real time requirements. Paper describes a creative study of the new concept, consisting in implementation of selected mechanisms and devices in dedicated digital circuit. Bus guardian block, responsible for enabling/disabling the access to media and error detection was selected. The architecture, containing a series of finite state machines, watchdogs, and other logic, controlled by the programmable registers, accessible via the serial interface, was proposed. The design was implemented in VHDL and verified. The rough synthesis for a programmable circuit (FPGA) was successfully performed. FlexRay protocol is still in the development phase. The authors referred to the preliminary version of the specification.