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As automotive systems are becoming increasingly distributed, communication between their components is becoming even more eminent. In safety-relevant distributed systems, the reliability of communication between nodes is crucial for the safety of a system. To guarantee such reliability, it is prerequisite that all nodes in the system have a consistent view of which nodes are functioning correctly and which are not (group membership). In this paper existing algorithms for ensuring group membership are presented and possible solutions for communication systems without such functionality, for example FlexRay, as well as a solution for a network based approach are outlined.

A significant portion of communication in Automotive Networks consists of signals, which are vital to the safety of the vehicle. In addition to requirements resulting from the actual transfer of information an Automotive Communication Protocol has to incorporate properties which ensure operational safety even in presence of errors. Based upon a discrimination into reversible errors and irreversible failures, defect nodes have to be determined and subsequently disconnected from the network. In this paper proper schemes for error detection, report, recovery and confinement are presented.

The new aerial communication protocol “Controller Area Network” (CAN) efficiently supports distributed realtime control in automotive applications. In order to unload CPUs from high-speed message transfer, dedicated CAN hardware handles messages up to the communication object level. In multiplex wiring message rates are one to two orders of magnitude lower, allowing to implement the upper communication level more cost-effectively in software. This reduces CAN interface hardware to bitwise protocol handling only. It may be incorporated even into low-end microcontrollers without significantly increasing chip size. Thus the same CAN protocol supports the entire range of serial automotive communication, matching implementation costs to requirements at each performance level.