How can we take the most advantage of our engineering effort in the age of connected vehicle? It is well known that modern vehicles contain a staggering amount of functions, which are increasing passenger’s safety and comfort but also complexity.
The new generation of automotive High-Performance Computing Units (HPCs) such as Link Motion’s Carputer allow to pack several functions in one single hardware platform and isolate them using secure containers. Due to the speed of technology adoption, it is likely that this approach will co-exist with the traditional single-function Electronic Control Units for several years. The vehicle architecture will combine several top-level HPCs interconnected with automotive ethernet with CAN-based ECUs.
One of the main use cases for Connected Vehicle is the possibility to perform Over the Air Firmware Update, Configuration and Remote Diagnostics. To get the most milk with the less moo, automotive engineers can take advantage of existing standards to ensure a smooth process for engineering, production and after-sales services.
- The Open Diagnostics Data eXchange standard (ODX: ISO 22901) was created to describe the diagnostic capabilities of vehicles, and it is perfect to describe ECUs that implement protocols such as the Unified Diagnostic Protocol (UDS: ISO 14230)
- The MCD-3D (ISO 22900-3) defines an API that uses the ODX data to perform communication and interpretation, reducing the implementation effort to create diagnostic, reprogramming and configuration applications.
- The D-PDU-API (ISO 22900-2) abstracts the communication to the vehicle and implements details of the diagnostic standards such as Diagnostics over IP (DoIP) and UDS on CAN.
DSA has successfully migrated our high-performance diagnostic stack implementation and made it suitable for deployment as a Virtual ECU running on an HPC. Together with a set of applications that cover the most common use cases such as remote diagnostics and firmware update, it is possible to deploy a connected vehicle solution with full integration with the Microsoft Azure Cloud in a short period of time.
Looking into the future, we are working into the next generation of standards for HPCs that will allow us to simplify the software management, monitoring and diagnostic of future cars.
The DSA approach allows you to have the most profit of connected vehicle with the least amount of effort, leveraging existing engineering capabilities and tooling with an eye into future developments. This will in turn reduce risk and accelerate time to market.
To learn more about our integration of the diagnostics standards in the vehicle, download our white paper “Vehicle Connectivity as an Enabler for new life-cycle-oriented Services”
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Mario Ortegón
Head of System Strategy & Innovation Management
DSA Daten-und Systemtechnik GmbH