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The increasing complexity of electric/electronic architectures (EEA) in the automotive domain raised the necessity of model-based development processes for the design of such heterogeneous systems, which combine different engineering principles with different viewpoints. High-level simulation is a great means to evaluate the EEA in the concept phase of the design, since it reduces costly real-world experiments. However, model-based EEA design and analysis as well as its simulation are often separate processes in the development lifecycle. In this paper, we present a novel approach that extends state-of-the-art model-based systems engineering principles of EEA by a behavior specification reusing library components. The specification is seamlessly integrated in the development process of a single source EEA model. Therewith, the starting point is the abstract logical function architecture of the EEA.

Various algorithms such as emergency brake or crash warning using V2X communication have been published recently. For such systems hard real-time constraints have to be satisfied. Therefore latency needs to be minimized to keep the message processing delay below a certain threshold. Existing V2X systems based on the IEEE 1609 and SAE J2735 standards implement most message processing in software. This means the latency of these systems strongly depends on the CPU load as well as the number of incoming messages per time. According to safety constraints all messages of nearby vehicles have to be processed, whereby no prediction of the message importance can be given without analyzing the message content. Regarding the aforementioned requirements we propose a novel architecture that optimizes latency to satisfy the hard real-time constraints for V2X messages.

Due to the continuously increasing complexity of automotive electric/electronic architectures (EEAs), model-based systems engineering principles became state-of-the-art for designing such heterogeneous systems. However, current Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) as well as their system-design and analysis tools and frameworks for simulation-based analysis of EEA models often are not fully integrated in a single design process. They usually require error-prone import/export processes, especially when considering distributed collaboration, from EEA data models to external analysis frameworks and vice versa. Particularly, this limits the efficient assessment and comparison of distinct architecture variants regarding certain non-functional properties. Moreover, simulation-based analysis of the latter intended for EEA assessments in early concept phases demands backtracking capabilities to allow iterative model adaptations.

Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are well-established solutions in the IT industry. Their use in the automotive domain is still on the way. Up to now, the automotive domain has taken advantage of service-oriented architectures only in the area of infotainment and not for systems with hard real-time requirements. However, applying SOA to such systems has just started but is missing suitable design and verification methodologies. In this context, we target to include the notion of model-based design to address fail-operational systems. As a result, a model-based approach for the development of fail-operational systems based on dynamic reconfiguration using a service-oriented architecture is illustrated. For the evaluation, we consider an example function of an automatically controlled braking system and analyze the reconfiguration time when the function fails.

Classical decentralized architectures based on large networks of microprocessor-based Electronic Control Units (ECU), namely those used in self-driving cars and other highly-automated applications used in the automotive industry, are becoming more and more complex. These new, high computational power demand applications are constrained by limits on energy consumption, weight, and size of the embedded components. The adoption of new embedded centralized electrical/electronic (E/E) architectures based on dynamically reconfigurable hardware represents a new possibility to tackle these challenges. However, they also raise concerns and questions about their safety. Hence, an appropriate evaluation must be performed to guarantee that safety requirements resulting from an Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) according to the standard ISO 26262 are met. In this paper, a methodology for the evaluation of dynamically reconfigurable systems based on centralized architectures is presented.