A scheme for slot allocation of the FlexRay Static Segment based on response time analysis

Abstract

In the last decade, the FlexRay communication protocol has been promoted as a standard for dependable in-vehicular communications. In the FlexRay protocol, the communication timeline is organized as a sequence of four segments, whereas the Static Segment assigns a set of static slots for the transmission of synchronous messages. In this paper, we address the following problems: “How to efficiently transmit periodic messages in the Static Segment without requiring their periods to be multiples of, or to be synchronized with the FlexRay Communication Cycle?” “Is it possible to guarantee that periodic messages are transferred before their deadlines, without imposing such strict synchronization?” Unlike traditional approaches that use linear-programming based techniques, we evaluate the minimum number of allocated slots using traditional Response Time Analysis (RTA). The use of RTA techniques allows us to consider the timing requirements associated to each of the asynchronous message streams. Unlike other approaches, the RTA-based technique proposed in this paper: (a) is able to deal with message stream sets where periods are not multiple of the FlexRay cycle duration and (b) does not require the strict synchronization between tasks/signals at the application layer and slots at the FlexRay communication controller. The proposed slot allocation scheme may be of high practical interest when considering the interconnection of FlexRay/CAN in-vehicular communication systems, allowing the remapping of existing CAN message streams to FlexRay.