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BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Motorola and Philips present their joint development activity related to the FlexRay communication system that is intended for distributed applications in vehicles. The designated applications for powertrain and chassis control place requirements in terms of availability, reliability and data bandwidth that cannot be met by any product currently available on the market under the testing conditions encountered in an automobile. A short look back on events so far is followed by a description of the protocol and its first implementation as an integrated circuit, as well as its incorporation into a complete tool environment.

The provision of a system-wide global time base with good precision and accuracy is a fundamental prerequisite for the design of a time-triggered automotive real-time control system. In this paper we investigate the issues of clock synchronization in such a system. Our synchronization scheme allows every node to have a different oscillator. Based on typical parameters we derive the achievable precision and accuracy, which is in the microsecond range. The description of a prototype implementation shows the applicability of our approach.