Unidirectional ring ethernet for low-complexity in-vehicle control network

This paper proposes a low-complexity automotive control network based on Ethernet. Modern vehicles suffer from heavy wiring harness caused by multiple control networks such as controller area network (CAN) and FlexRay. The proposed network connects electronic control units (ECUs) by a unidirectional ring network, reducing the wiring cost significantly. The performance of the proposed network is evaluated using the OMNET++ simulation tool with adopting realistic models of automotive control packets in order to investigate two metrics, the maximum number of ECUs and the minimum interval of packet transmission. As a result, the proposed network is proven to be a promising method that can connect more than a hundred of ECUs with the simple ring topology. Furthermore, valuable guidelines effective in deciding the specification of the proposed network are derived.