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More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers with incredible levels of peripheral integration. As a result, performance can no longer be measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). A microcontroller's effectiveness is based on coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, the designer needs benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers whose performance can no longer be measured in MIPS. Instead, their effectiveness is based on a coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, what the designer needs are benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment. This presentation will explore the role of new benchmarks in the development of complex automotive applications.

Increasingly stringent requirements to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions are pushing the automotive industry toward more innovative solutions. To fulfill the demand, OEMs are developing hybrid systems with powerful electronics. The key technology is in all cases the battery. It is the most critical and expensive element of hybrid systems. The battery requires special care, as it must supply up to 400 Volts (V) and have a capacity of up to several kilowatt-hours (kWh). This paper will review the main functions of a Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery management system, including power on/off, charging/discharging, and computation of the state of charge and state of health. In order to increase the battery lifespan, new functions such as active load balancing must be implemented.

This paper considers the verification of non-standard CAN network topologies of the physical layer at high speed transmission rate (500.0Kbps and 1.0Mbps). These network topologies including single star, multiple stars, and hybrid topologies (multiple stars in combination with linear bus or with ring topology) are simulated by using behavior modeling language (VHDL-AMS) in comparison to measurement. Throughout the verification process, CAN transceiver behavioral model together with other CAN physical layer simulation components have been proved to be very accurate. The modeling of measurement environment of the CAN network is discussed, showing how to get the measurement and simulation results well matched. This demonstrates that the simulation solution is reliable, which is highly desired and very important for the verification requirement in CAN physical layer design.

The increasing legal requirements for safety, emission reduction, fuel economy and onboard diagnosis systems push the market for more innovative solutions with rapidly increasing complexity. Hence, the embedded systems that will have to control the automobiles have been developed at such an extent that they are now equivalent in scale and complexity to the most sophisticated avionics systems. This paper will demonstrate the key elements to provide a powerful, scalable and configurable solution that offers a migration pass to evolution and even revolution of automotive Sensors and Sensor interfaces. The document will explore different architectures and partitioning. Sensor technologies such as magnetic field sensors based on the hall effect as well as bulk and surface silicon micro machined sensors will be mapped to automotive applications by examples. Functions such as self-test, self-calibration and self-repair will be developed.

The increasing legal requirements for safety, emission reduction, fuel economy and onboard diagnosis systems is pushing the market for more innovative solutions with rapidly increasing complexity. Hence, the embedded systems that will have to control the automobiles have been developed at such an extent that they are now equivalent in scale and complexity to the most sophisticated avionics systems. The former analogue filter design is now replaced by digital signal processing. This paper will demonstrate the key elements to provide a powerful, scalable and configurable solution that offers a migration route to evolve and even revolutionize automotive electronics. To illustrate this migration toward digital processing the knock function has been developed. A simple RC filter is used as external anti-aliasing. To get the maximum flexibility the signal is very early converted and processed digitally. The micro-controller has been developed using a three-layered solution.

Fuel efficiency and clean combustion engine versus high engine performance - which will increase up to factor 10 in the next 5 years - with less engine displacement are driving more complex engine control systems in today's and future vehicles. The challenge is not only to design a perfect engine, but also to incorporate the right semiconductors. Beside this demand on high sophisticated electronics the demand on cost reduction - especially for small cars - is one driving factor for a smart partitioning. Infineon offers sensors, microcontrollers and power semiconductors for today's engine management platforms and therefore owns the right technologies to manufacture those devices. This opens up the possibility to integrate more functionality in less devices as in today's partitioning or to define electronics to simplify complex control strategies and to optimize the performance of each device.

This paper shall present advancements in electronic transmission control circuits addressing new challenges in the gearbox striving for improved vehicle efficiency and comfort of driving. Efficient chipset design, requires finding the optimal partitioning, that is the mapping of functionality to hardware or software and analog or digital circuit technology. The efficiency will be judged by minimal cost whilst achieving improved functionality and required scalability for a platform approach. Specific examples demonstrated are smart sensor architecture and new mapping of control strategies, realized with a novice integrated current control IC concept. Comparisons on system level are used to evaluate different function mappings as well as component partitioning. Details of the most optimized mapping and partitioning will be elaborated and first results of implementation in silicon components will be shown.

The number of safety critical automotive applications employing high current brushless motors continues to increase (Steering, Braking, and Transmission etc.). There are many benefits when moving from traditional solutions to electrically actuated solutions. Some of these benefits can include increased fuel economy, simplified vehicle installation and packaging, increased feature set, improved safety and/or convenience, simplified unit assembly and modular testability prior as well as during vehicle manufacturing. The trend to implement brushless motors in these applications (which require electronically controlled commutation) has also brought with it the need for powerful inverters, which primarily consist of Power MOSFETs and MOSFET Driver ICs. This paper reviews the challenges associated with the design of safety critical electronic systems which combine sensing, control and actuation.

The signal delivery and quality of sensor data is of growing importance for modern automotive control applications. Sensors tend to be calibrated subsystems that are designed to stay in a defined tolerance and thus can easily be modeled. Compared to this deterministic behavior the transmission channel is time variant due to EMC and aging of contacts for example. The use of analog signaling, which is the actual state of realization in many cases, is sensitive to the time variant effects mentioned before. This time variance is hard to consider for the control system development. In this paper we will analyze the role of the sensor in the signal supply chain and discuss approaches for digital sensor-ECU communication and their potential to establish a link, which allows neglecting low level effects of the channel.

Single Edge Nibble Transmission (SENT) is a promising low-cost solution for communication between off-ECU sensors and a microcontroller. First, this paper analyses the advantages of digital sensors with a special focus on position sensors. The possible integration of SENT in other application fields (such as pressure sensors) is also discussed. Secondly, it describes possible solutions for handling SENT communication on microcontrollers and it gives practical examples based on Infineon's TriCore and XC2000 families. It discusses the constraints and limitations on software level and how they could be solved by dedicated hardware implementations. Finally, this paper presents the Short PWM Code (SPC) protocol, which is a further extension of the SENT protocol. SPC aims at increasing the performance of the communication link and reducing system costs at the same time. By allowing bidirectional communication, SPC opens the way to new system relevant functionalities.

The trend towards even more sophisticated driver assistance systems and growing automation of driving sets new requirements for the robustness and availability of the involved automotive systems. In case of an error, today it is still sufficient that safety related systems just fail safe or silent to prevent safety related influence of the driving stability resulting in a functional deactivation. But the reliance on passive mechanical fallbacks in which the human driver taking over control, being inevitable in such a scenario, is expected to get more and more insufficient along with a rising degree of driving automation as the driver will be given longer reaction time. The advantage of highly or even fully automated driving is that the driver can focus on other tasks than controlling the car and monitoring it’s behavior and environment.