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The introduction of FlexRay is often motivated with high bandwidth, fail-safety, and deterministic timing. To no surprise, FlexRay is currently being introduced broadly in the chassis domain with its safety-critical, distributed control functions. However, also FlexRay system exhibit unwanted timing effects such as over- and under-sampling and ECU signal jitter. To fully exploit FlexRay’s potential, these effects must be understood, controlled, and reasonably considered in the supply-chain communication. In this paper, we illustrate the key timing pitfalls that exist with FlexRay. We further demonstrate how timing analysis increases confidence and allows thorough optimizations of FlexRay designs. This helps OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers to protect against timing problems early. Parts of the technology are available, however, new methodological steps are needed.

Systems and network integration is a major challenge, and systematic analysis of the complex dynamic timing effects becomes key to building reliable systems. Very often, however, systematic analysis techniques are (considered) too restrictive with respect to established design practice. In this paper we present lessons learned from real-world case studies, in which OEMs have used the new SymTA/S scheduling analysis technology to evaluate different network choices with minimum effort. Thanks to its flexibility and supplier independence, SymTA/S can be applied in non-ideal situations, where other, more restricted technologies are inherently limited. Finally, we put the technology into relation with ongoing standardization activities.