Abstract. Modern premium automobiles are equipped with an increasing number of Electronic Control Units (ECUs). These ECUs are interconnected and form a complex network to provide a wide range of advanced vehicle functionality. Analyzing the flow of messages in this network and tracking down problems has become a major challenge for automotive engineers. By observing their working practices, we found that the tools they currently use are mostly text-based and largely fail to provide correlations among the enormous amount of data. We established requirements for a more appropriate (visual) tool set. We followed a user-centered approach to design several visualizations for in-car communication processes, each with a clear purpose and application scenario. Then we used low-fidelity prototypes to evaluate our ideas and to identify the "working" designs. Based on this selection, we finally implemented a prototype and conducted an expert evaluation which revealed the emergence of a novel mental model for thinking about and discussing in-car communication processes.
The requirements for in-car communication networks are constantly growing. A high amount of electronic control units with increasing communication demands have to be connected by a multitude of different automotive specific network technologies. All these facts lead to an increasing complexity and accordingly higher production cost. To cope with these challenges there is a vision to do a radical step: The use of the Internet Protocol (IP) as an overall communication technology. This paper describes the design and realization of an IP-based in-car network architecture that replaces the existing in-car network technologies. We describe the benefits of the Internet Protocol as the enabler for future innovative in-car applications and define mechanisms to obtain the required quality of service and real-time behavior. Finally, we describe the implementation of an experimental vehicle with an integrated IP network as a proof of concept that covers all communication domains in the car.
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