AUTOSAR-Compliant Methodology for Calibrating ECUs using Universal Calibration and Measurement Protocol

Abstract

"I. POINTS TO BE ADDRESSED Electronic Control Unit (ECU) calibration, i.e., finding optimal values for ECU-parameters of a new vehicle, has become a crucial element for the overall vehicle performance. It is an essential part of the development process: from functional development to production. The main challenges in calibrating complex ECUs are tuning thousands of calibration parameters and taking into account numerous interactions between different software functions and ECUs. In addition, calibration tasks are normally performed in a work-split between Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), tier-1 suppliers and basic software (BSW) suppliers. Moreover, calibration of electronic systems have to be done for a number of model variants or different vehicles which are sold in the different markets. Accordingly, companies require solutions that combine human expertise and easy data handling to manage complex calibration tasks. II. METHODOLOGY A complete calibration system solution consists of: a target ECU, on top of which a specific system is running, along with an embedded Universal Calibration and Measurement Protocol (XCP) driver; a Measurement and Calibration (MC) tool that usually runs on a PC; and an interface through which the target ECU is connected to the MC tool. In this paper, we will introduce a complete and efficient toolchain for performing calibration and measurement processes, so that ECU software is parameterized in such a manner that the behavior of vehicle systems can be easily adapted to a variety of vehicle models or system variants. Additionally, we will explain the required data model through the different parts of the toolchain. III. CONCLUSION XCP has a distinct business advantage, as it increases functionality to help both the OEM and modules supplier focus on the development of electronic module applications. Additionally, internal support staff dedicated to maintain proprietary internal tools for module calibration, testing, measurement, and flash programming is no longer needed since “off-the-shelf” tools are available for this purpose. Finally, our toolchain is efficient to be used with OEMs cars that are composed of AUTOSAR-based ECUs."