Automotive Electronic Control Research Articles

Container-Based Electronic Control Unit Virtualisation: A Paradigm Shift Towards a Centralised Automotive E/E Architecture

The past 40 years have seen automotive Electronic Control Units (ECUs) move from being purely mechanical controlled to being primarily digital controlled. While the safety of passengers and efficiency of vehicles has seen significant improvements, rising ECU numbers have resulted in increased vehicle weight, greater demands placed on power, more complex hardware and software, ad hoc methods for updating software, and subsequent increases in costs for both vehicle manufacturers and consumers. To address these issues, the research presented in this paper proposes that virtualisation technologies be applied within automotive electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture. The proposed approach is evaluated by comprehensively studying the CPU and memory resource requirements to support container-based ECU automotive functions. This comprehensive performance evaluation reveals that lightweight container virtualisation has the potential to welcome a paradigm shift in E/E architecture, promoting consolidation and enhancing the architecture by facilitating power, weight, and cost savings. Container-based virtualisation will also enable efficient and robust online dynamic software updates throughout a vehicle’s lifetime.

A hybrid framework for latency compensation in remote testing of automotive electronic control units

As the number of electronic control units (ECUs) in vehicles continues to grow, exchanging physical components between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and ECU suppliers presents logistical challenges, impeding the pace of development and leading to accumulation of costs. In this work, we introduce a conceptual framework that enables remote testing of geographically dispersed ECUs over the Internet. Pertinent to the Internet of Things (IoT) sphere, where interconnection of distributed components is hampered by the inherent challenges of latency, we propose a hybrid synchronous methodology that combines asynchronous test management with time synchronization mechanisms to mitigate the delay impact within the distributed environment. Additionally, we discuss challenges and prospects associated with this approach.

Teaching Strategies for Automotive Engine Electronic Control System Testing and Maintenance Course under the “1+X” Certificate System

With the continuous development of China’s economy, cars have become the most common means of transportation for people. However, due to this impact, the contradiction between the market demand for after-sales services such as car testing and maintenance and the actual supply of professional technical personnel has become increasingly prominent. Therefore, strengthening the education reform of automotive inspection and maintenance professional technology has become an important task for major vocational colleges. The “1+X” certificate system has become a new norm in vocational education reform in China due to its significant advantages in cultivating students’ professional knowledge and skills to obtain professional skills certificates. Based on this, this article takes the course of automotive engine electronic control system testing and maintenance as an example to explain the practical significance and strategies of course teaching based on the “1+X” certificate system, aiming to further promote professional teaching reform and provide some reference for colleagues.

Design of four-wheel steering system based on automotive electronic control technology

Abstract With the rapid development of the automobile industry, people’s requirements for automobile handling performance and driving safety are getting higher and higher. As an important automobile power system, four-wheel steering technology can improve the maneuverability, stability, and safety of vehicles by controlling the steering angles of front and rear wheels. Therefore, the design and research of the four-wheel steering system has become one of the hotspots in the field of automotive engineering. In this paper, a two-degree-of-freedom dynamics model is established, and based on the PID control strategy of joint feedback of center-of-mass lateral deflection and traverse angular velocity, the vehicle model of a four-wheeled steering vehicle is constructed by using TruckSim, and the minimum turning radius test, serpentine test, and steering wheel angle step test project are carried out. The results show that compared with the two-wheel steering vehicle, the minimum turning diameter of the four-wheel steering vehicle is reduced by 1/3, which effectively improves the maneuverability at low speeds as well as the safety and stability at high speeds, and has better transient response.

TRIAC Based Isolated AC Load Drive Equivalent Circuit Design of Solid-State Relay

Electronic main boards generally provide the supply and control functions of a system. All electronic main boards include inputs and outputs and are designed according to the design requirements. In this study, a safe and low-cost switching mode power supply (SMPS) board is designed using a flyback converter topology to drive the AC and DC outputs. The triode for alternating current (TRIAC)-based safe and low-cost main board includes a flyback configured transformer with additional winding for driving the TRIAC as an AC output switch in noise immune quadrants II and III. TRIAC is used to switch AC outputs instead of a relay, and the isolation distances of the safety criteria are provided by an optocoupler. In this way, the relay usage is over, and one TRIAC and one optocoupler do the same work that is done by one relay. In this way, the cost of the AC output switch decreases. In addition, the number of AC switches covering the area on the printed-circuit board (PCB) of the mainboard decreases. The flyback topology is designed with half-wave rectified and the transformer is designed with extra winding for producing negative voltage with respect to primer reference for providing negative gate current of TRIAC. TRIAC-based AC output switched, safe, and low-cost main boards can be used for white good main boards, automation (PLC) applications, and automotive electronic control systems. This study provides cost-effective solutions in these areas.

Automotive Electronic Control Unit Ground Line Health Monitoring Method

Electronic Control Units (ECUs) have been used in the automotive industry for decades to control one or more of the vehicle subsystems. The ECUs communicate primarily using the in-vehicle Controller Area Network (CAN) communication protocol. The recent rapid development of connected, electric, and autonomous vehicles expands the number of ECUs and complexity of the CAN network required to integrate vehicle systems and deliver the desired functionalities. This demands increased reliability of the ECUs to ensure for robust vehicle performance. One of the most common ECU failure modes is the ECU ground fault. A ground fault occurs when the ground path in the ECU circuit is corroded, which is usually developed slowly over time. Such failure usually results in various symptoms including ECU incapable of functioning and further impacts the vehicle functionalities negatively. This type of fault can be difficult to detect prior to vehicle functionality loss. It usually involves routinely testing the resistance of the ground circuit, visually inspecting the connectors and wirings, and checking the voltage drop across the ground circuit. Therefore, it is highly desirable to continuously monitor the ECU ground line health status to predict any degradation and thus prevent vehicle functionality losses.
 This paper presents a novel method to monitor the health status of ECU ground line. The method leverages measured CAN voltage data to estimate the ECU ground state of health. The CAN voltage measurements are preprocessed and fed into a real-time data buffer of predefined size. Statistical moments are calculated from the buffered data to generate health indicators, which are then combined to form a fused health indicator. The fused health indicator is used to determine the health stage of ECU ground line. The health stage is classified based on the relationship between ground line degradation level and the ECU communication loss status. The method was developed and validated using actual vehicle data.

Supporting logical execution time in multi-core POSIX systems

Safety-critical automotive applications require predictable and deterministic execution to not miss the timing requirements. Logical Execution Time (LET) is a paradigm already established in the automotive industry to improve the predictability and correctness of time-critical applications. Despite LET being already part of the AUTOSAR Classic standard, no prior work has addressed the design of this model on POSIX-based operating systems, which will be the base of next-generation automotive Electronic Control Units (ECUs). This paper proposes and discusses possible LET design approaches for these novel systems. Different implementations are then evaluated and compared through the WATERS Challenge automotive application running on a multi-core heterogeneous hardware platform.

Low-Cost Data Acquisition System for Automotive Electronic Control Units.

The vehicle testing-validation phase is a crucial and demanding task in the automotive development process for vehicle manufacturers. It ensures the correct operation, safety, and efficiency of the vehicle. To meet this demand, some commercial solutions are available on the market, but they are usually expensive, have few connectivity options, and are PC-dependent. This paper presents an IoT-based intelligent low-cost system for vehicle data acquisition during on-road tests as an alternative solution. The system integrates low-cost acquisition hardware with an IoT server, collecting and transmitting data in near real-time, while artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms process the information and report errors and/or failures to the manufacturing engineers. The proposed solution was compared with other commercial systems in terms of features, performance, and cost. The results indicate that the proposed system delivers similar performance in terms of the data acquisition rate, but at a lower cost (up to 13 times cheaper) and with more advanced features, such as near real-time intelligent data processing and reduced time to find and correct errors or failures in the vehicle.

Ground Fault Diagnostics for Automotive Electronic Control Units

An electronic control unit (ECU) with a floating ground is not able to receive or transmit messages or participate in controller area network (CAN) communication. The absence of any ECU, either temporarily or permanently, negatively impacts vehicle functionalities. The offset ground, which by itself will not affect bus functionalities if the grounding resistance is small, however, may evolve into a floating ground or behave similarly if the resistance is large. In this work, the correlation among ground faults, either offset or floating, and CAN bus voltage or messages are analyzed based on the equivalent circuit models and the bus protocol. A voltage-based solution to detect ground faults is proposed. With the help of bus messages, both faults can be isolated at the ECU level. Considering the inherent system delay between the message fetching and voltage measurement, a normalized voltage-message correlation approach with the bus load estimation is developed as well. All proposed approaches are implemented to an Arduino-based embedded system and validated on a vehicle frame.

자동차 전자제어장치의 열 피로를 고려한 가속수명시험법 개발에 관한 연구

The automotive electronic control unit outputs control signals using electrical signals of various input sensors installed in the vehicle to control the state of the engine, automatic transmission, and electric power steering (EPS). These units are installed inside the vehicle or engine room, and the temperature rises and falls by several tens of degrees due to the heat of the engine and the self-heating of the electronic control unit. Therefore, it was exposed to a thermal fatigue environment due to the difference in the coefficient of thermal expansion between the components, which caused frequent component damage. Solder cracks due to thermal fatigue in electronic control units are a key failure mode. However, because of its great heat capacity, the electronic control unit for automobiles took a long time to attain the desired temperature of high or low, and as a result, the 1,000-cycle test for thermal fatigue life verification required 3,167 hours (or 4.4 months). Therefore, in this study, the thermal shock cycle test time for the verification of the thermal fatigue life of electronic control units for automobiles was reduced by dividing it into two types.

Dynamic model of the temperature downstream to an indirect charge-air cooler considering heat losses to the environment

Thermal management plays an increasingly important role for internal combustion engines due to the high demands on the transient response of vehicles and the legal requirements for pollutants. In particular, the goal to reduce exhaust-gas raw emissions while optimizing fuel consumption can be supported with the help of on-demand temperature control. One strategy to meet the thermal requirements connected to this consists of model-based approaches. For an implementation of such methods on an automotive electronic control unit, a sufficiently high accuracy has to be ensured by the underlying model, alongside the fulfillment of the real-time operation demand. In this publication, we suggest two analytical modeling approaches for heat exchangers with poor thermal isolation with respect to the surrounding. Here we lay a special focus on the real-time capability of the given algorithm for an automotive on-board application. To this end, we utilize the Hammerstein method which allows to divide the overall physical system into a nonlinear stationary part and a dynamical linear one. The former are based on the well-known concept for the dimensionless temperature change of heat exchangers, where we generalize this approach in order to take account of the heat-losses to the surrounding. We demonstrate our model for an indirect charge-air cooler in an internal combustion engine. For both models we find excellent accuracy, with an overall mean-absolute error of 1.23 K and 1.33 K respectively, when compared to experimental data sets containing measurements from the Worldwide harmonized Light Duty Test Procedure.

Two-Layer Bus-Independent Instruction Set Architecture for Securing Long Protocol Data Units in Automotive Open System Architecture-Based Automotive Electronic Control Units

In this paper, we propose a bus-independent hardware (HW)-based approach to secure long protocol data units (PDUs) in Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR)-based automotive electronic control units (ECUs). Our approach is based on extending previous works that implemented two AUTOSAR communication (COM) application-specific instruction set processors (ASIPs). COM ASIP V1 introduced two instructions to handle the transmission and reception of PDUs no larger than 8 bytes and signals no larger than 32 bits individually through send signal and receive signal instructions. COM ASIP V2 introduced two extra instructions to handle long signals and PDUs of arbitrary lengths. We extended the instruction set architecture (ISA) of our previous ASIPs by introducing six new instructions, in COM ASIP V3, to hash PDUs that contain these signals to authenticate transmission and reception of such PDUs. The experimental results show that COM ASIP V3 can handle (i.e., transmit, receive, calculate hash, or verify hash) a 64-byte controller area network flexible data-rate (CAN FD) frame in 1.575 μs and a 254-byte FlexRay frame in 6.301 μs. These measurements indicate that the throughput of our new COM ASIP is much higher, 42× to 75×, than the throughput required by these communication buses.

Method of Differential-Based Remote Upgrade for ECUs on Vehicles*

In view of the problem that the current update flashing of the traditional automotive electronic control unit (ECU) software highly relies on professional maintenance personnel and external equipment, a method for ECU remote data flashing is proposed to achieve remote and efficient upgrade of ECU software. Furthermore, through the introduction of backup partitions and differential upgrade methods, the problems of lack of fault-tolerant processing, high bandwidth requirements and low efficiency in traditional ECU software update flashing are also solved. In this article, a remote update system is built, including the server-side and the vehicle, and the interface and communication protocols are defined based on HTTPS. The above methods have been verified on NXP IMX 6 platform. Associated testing of the simulation of the ECU by the STM32 and ROCKCHIP demo board has been made based on the CAN and Ethernet simulating the vehicle network architecture. By the real data catching from Ethernet and the CAN, the details of the log file of the programs’ event tracking information are analyzed to obtain the experimental results. The results indicated that the incremental remote data updating system built in this article can remotely update the CAN software accurately and efficiently in all simulation tests, which proved the practicability, accuracy, and efficiency of this method.

Adaptive constrained control for automotive electronic throttle control system with experimental analysis

Abstract This article proposes an adaptive constrained control strategy with state constraints and uncertain parameters for an electronic throttle control (ETC) system. Compared with the current control strategies for an ETC system, state constraints and parameter uncertainties are adequately considered in the proposed control strategy. First, the nonlinear dynamic model for control of an ETC is described. Second, the asymmetric Barrier Lyapunov Function (BLF) and a backstepping control algorithm are used to ensure that the throttle opening does not exceed the constrained boundary. A parameter adaptive law is given to estimate the unknown parameter and external disturbances with an ETC system. Third, the proposed BLF controller is compared with the existing Quadratic Lyapunov Function (QLF) controller by simulation and experiment. The results show that the proposed control algorithm not only ensure fast transient performance in the control response, but also avoid the out of bounds of the throttle opening. The proposed constrained control strategy can provide excellent control performance for an ETC system.

A Multicycle Pipelined GCM-Based AUTOSAR Communication ASIP

In this paper, we explore two pipeline techniques to enhance performance of communication operations in AUTomotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR)-based automotive electronic control units (ECUs), and securing these communication operations using an enhanced two-layer process based on the highly secure Galois/Counter Mode of Operation (GCM) algorithm. Our work is based on extending a previous work that implemented three versions of AUTOSAR communication (COM) application-specific instruction set processor (ASIP). We made two pipelined architectures on top of COM ASIP V3 (i.e. COM ASIP V4 and COM ASIP V5). These new versions of COM ASIP are able to handle all operations (i.e. transmitting signals/long signals, receiving signals/long signals, calculating hash, or verifying hash for protocol data units (PDUs) containing these signals using GCM) of our previously implemented COM ASIPs in a pipelined fashion. The experimental results show that COM ASIP V4 has a speedup of 2.25x to 2.39x over COM ASIP V3, and COM ASIP V5 has a speedup of 3.27x to 5.5x over COM ASIP V3. They also show that throughput of these new versions of COM ASIP is much more, 100x to 338x, than throughput required by Controller Area Network Flexible Data Rate (CAN FD) and FlexRay communication buses.

Asynchronous sliding mode dissipative control for discrete-time Markov jump systems with application to automotive electronic throttle body control system

In this paper, we study the asynchronous observer-based sliding mode control for a class of discrete-time Markov jump systems with time-delay and conic-type nonlinearities. Firstly, we assume there exists a detector described by the hidden Markov model that provides estimated information of the system mode. Based on the detector, a common sliding surface and an observer-based controller are devised. Secondly, we select the appropriate Lyapunov functional and applying linear matrix inequalities techniques to get sufficient conditions such that the controller and observer gains are obtained, which can guarantee the stochastic stability and strict dissipativity of the sliding mode dynamics. Furthermore, the given H∞ and passive performance are also discussed. Thirdly, to make the system trajectory get to the predetermined sliding surface, a sliding mode control law is proposed. Finally, an application related to the automotive electronic throttle body control system is given to illustrate the correctness and feasibility of this designed approach.

Application Computer Detection and Control System in Automobile Electronic Control System

The overall development of our society has promoted the development of computer technology, making the various performances of modern cars more perfect. The application of computer detection and control system technology in automobile electronic control devices can realize the intelligence and automation of automobile control. Now in the information age, computer perception and control technology are widely used in various social production fields, and are also widely used in automotive electronic control systems. Due to the emergence of automotive electronic control technology, automotive performance continues to improve, automotive safety performance improves, and automotive dynamic performance becomes stronger. In the automotive electronic control device, to understand the role of the computer detection and control system more specifically, it is necessary to fully understand and master the operation principle of the computer detection and control technology and the application range of the automotive electronic control device. In order to further improve the safety performance of the vehicle, in addition to the structural improvement of the vehicle itself and the addition of safety protection devices, it is a more effective method to perceive the surrounding environment and vehicle status during driving to achieve control. This article first introduces the computer detection and control technology, and analyzes the application program in the automotive electronic control device for reference.

Research on the Sensitivity of Automotive Sensors under the Background of 5G

With the continuous development of automotive electronics, automotive sensing technology has also appeared and has been more and more widely used. As an important part of the automotive electronic control system, automotive sensors not only need to collect information, but also transmit information. The automobile sensor first needs to convert the automobile operating condition information into electrical signals and then transmit it to the central control unit, in order to make the engine reach the best working condition. In addition, automotive sensors can also perform accurate and real-time measurement and control for information such as pressure, temperature, speed, photoelectricity and flow rate, which greatly improves the effectiveness of information processing. As a factor that can affect the safe operation of a car, the quality of the car sensor plays a direct role. Therefore, in order to ensure the safe operation of automobiles, strict requirements on the accuracy, stability, responsiveness, shock resistance and service life of automobile sensors are required. The development of modern cars is moving towards a safer and more comfortable perspective and the key to achieving this goal lies in the development of sensors. At present, the development of sensors mainly depends on the development of new sensors and the integration, intelligence and multifunction of sensors. Realize the improvement of the sensor’s working accuracy and response speed and the ability to adapt to different environments. Therefore, studying the application of sensors in the current automotive field is of great significance to the future development of the automotive field and the sensor field.

Effectiveness of Noise Suppressing Sheet Material for Mitigation of Automotive Radiated Emissions

Integrated circuit (IC) and printed circuit board (PCB) electromagnetic (EM) modeling methods are becoming essential during the development of automotive electronic control units. Academic and industrial efforts focus on radiated and conducted emissions caused by flaws in PCB design from EM compatibility (EMC)/electrostatic discharge (ESD) point of view, including improper placement, grounding, and shielding of ICs. In this article, the effectiveness of noise suppressing sheet material for the mitigation of radiated emission at global positioning system (GPS) and Global'naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS) bands according to U.S. automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) requirements is investigated. A few test scenarios that include the NSS material are explored to gauge its performance in near-, intermediate-, and far-field regions, using 3-D full-wave numerical simulations and EMC laboratory experiments.

Performance Evaluation of Attribute-Based Encryption in Automotive Embedded Platform for Secure Software Over-The-Air Update.

This paper aims to show that it is possible to improve security for over the air update functionalities in an automotive scenario through the use of a cryptographic scheme, called “Attribute-Based-Encryption” (ABE), which grants confidentiality to the software/firmware update done Over The Air (OTA). We demonstrate that ABE is seamlessly integrable into the state of the art solutions regarding the OTA update by showing that the overhead of the ABE integration in terms of computation time and its storage is negligible w.r.t. the other overheads that are introduced by the OTA process, also proving that security can be enhanced with a minimum cost. In order to support our claim, we report the experimental results of an implementation of the proposed ABE OTA technique on a Xilinx ZCU102 evaluation board, which is an automotive-oriented HW/SW platform that is equipped with a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC chip that is representative of the computing capability of real automotive Electronic Control Units (ECUs).