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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.

It has become an important trend to implement safety-related requirements in the road vehicles. Recent studies have shown that accidents, which occurred when drivers are not focused due to fatigue or distractions, can be predicted in advance when using safety features. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are used to prevent this kind of situation. Currently, many major tiers are using a DSP chip for ADAS applications. This paper suggests the migration from a DSP configuration to a Microcontroller configuration for ADAS application, for example, using a 32bit Multi-core Microcontroller. In this paper, the following topics will be discussed. Firstly, this paper proposes and describes the system block diagram for ADAS configuration followed by the requirements of the ADAS system. Secondly, the paper discusses the current solutions using a DSP. Thirdly, the paper presents a system that is migrated to a Multi-core microcontroller.

The technology in the automotive industry is evolving rapidly in recent times. Thus, with the development of new technologies, the challenges are also ever-increasing from an Electromagnetic Interference and Susceptibility (EMI/EMC) perspective. A lot of the latest technologies in Adaptive Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which include Rear Drive Assist, Blind Spot Detection (BSD), Lane Change Assist (LCA) to name a few, and other features like Anti-Braking System (ABS), Emergency Brake Assist (EBD) etc. rely heavily on different types of sensors and their detection circuitry. In addition, a lot of other internal functions in the Engine Control Unit (ECU) also depend on such sensors’ functionalities. Thus, it becomes imperative to study the potential impact of higher field emissions on the immunity behaviour of the sensors.

As the demand for enhanced comfort, safety and differentiation with new features continues to grow and as electronics and software enable most of these, the number of electronic units or components within automobiles will continue to increase. This will increase the overall system complexity, specifically with respect to the number of controller actuators such as e-motors. However, hard constraints on cost and on physical boundaries such as maximum power dissipation per unit and pin-count per unit/connector require new solutions to alternative system partitioning. Vehicle manufacturers, as well as system and semiconductor suppliers are striving for increased scalability and modularity to allow for most cost optimal high volume configurations while featuring platform reuse and feature differentiation. This paper presents new semiconductor based approaches with respect to technologies, technology mapping and assembly technologies.

The development of highly automated driving functions (AD) recently rises the demand for so called Fail-Operational systems for native driving functions like steering and braking of vehicles. Fail-Operational systems shall guarantee the availability of driving functions even in presence of failures. This can also mean a degradation of system performance or limiting a system’s remaining operating period. In either case, the goal is independency from a human driver as a permanently situation-aware safety fallback solution to provide a certain level of autonomy. In parallel, the connectivity of modern vehicles is increasing rapidly and especially in vehicles with highly automated functions, there is a high demand for connected functions, Infotainment (web conference, Internet, Shopping) and Entertainment (Streaming, Gaming) to entertain the passengers, who should no longer occupied with driving tasks.

The recent improvements in automotive electronics have had a tremendous impact on safety, comfort and emissions. But the continuous increase of the volume of electronic equipment in cars (representing more than 25% of purchasing volume) as well as the increasing system complexity represent a new challenge to quality, post-sales customer support and maintenance. Identifying a fault in a complex network of ECUs, where the different functions are getting more and more intricate, is not an easy task. It can be shown that with the levels of reliability common in 1980, an upper-range automobile of today could never function fault-free. On-Board-Diagnostics (OBD) concepts are emerging to assist the maintenance personnel in localizing the source of a problem with high accuracy, reducing the vehicle repair time, repair costs and costs of warranty claims.

In terms of modern technical systems, the automotive sector is characterized by escalating complexity and functionality requirements. The development of embedded control systems has to meet highest demands regarding process-, time- and cost-optimization. Hence, the efficiency of software development becomes a crucial competitive advantage. Systems design engineers need effective tools and methods to achieve exemplary speed and productivity within the development phase. To obtain such tools and methods, semiconductor manufacturers and tool manufacturers must work closely together. Within the joint efforts of ETAS and Infineon, the software tool suite ASCET-SD was enhanced to generate efficient C code for Infineon's TriCore architecture mapped on ETAS's real-time operating system ERCOSEK. The processor interface to application & calibration tools was realized using the ETK probe based on a JTAG/Nexus link at very high bandwidth.

Infineon's latest high-end automotive microcontrollers like TC1796 are complex Systems On Chip (SoC) with two processor cores and up to two internal multi-master buses. The complex interaction between cores, peripherals and environment provides a big challenge for debugging. For mission critical control like engine management the debugging approach must not be intrusive. The provided solution are dedicated Emulation Devices which are able to deal with several 10 Gbit/s of raw internal trace data with nearly no cost adder for mass production and system design. Calibration, which is used later in the development cycle, has different requirements, but is covered by the Emulation Devices as well. The architecture of TC1796ED comprises the unchanged TC1796 silicon layout, extended by a full In-Circuit Emulator (ICE) and calibration overlay memory on the same die. In most cases, the only debug/calibration tool hardware needed is a USB cable.

In-vehicle communication faces increasing bandwidth demands, which can no longer be met by today's MOST150, FlexRay or CAN networks. In recent years, Fast Ethernet has gained a lot of momentum in the automotive world, because it promises to bridge the bandwidth gap. A first step in this direction is the introduction of Ethernet as an On Board Diagnostic (OBD) interface for production vehicles. The next potential use cases include the use of Ethernet in Driver Assistance Systems and in the infotainment domain. However, for many of these use cases, the Fast Ethernet solution is too slow to move the huge amount of data between the Domain Controllers, ADAS Systems, Safety Computer and Chassis Controller in an adequate way. The result is the urgent need for a network technology beyond the Fast Ethernet solution. The question is: which innovation will provide enough bandwidth for domain controllers, fast flashing routines, video data, MOST-replacement and internal ECU buses?

Introduction The introduction of Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet [2] as the main invehicle network infrastructure is the technical foundation for different new functionalities such as piloted driving, minimizing the CO2- footprint and others. The high data rate of such systems influences also the used microcontrollers due the fact that a big amount of data has to be transferred, encrypted, etc. Figure 1 Motivation - Vehicles will become connected to uncontrolled networks The usage of Ethernet as the in-vehicle-network enables the possibility that future road vehicles are going to be connected with other vehicles and information systems to improve system functionality. These previously closed automotive systems will be opened up for external access (see Figure 1). This can be Car2X connectivity or connection to personal devices. Allowing vehicle systems to communicate with other systems that are not within their physical boundaries impose a previously non-existing security problem.

The three major challenges in the power electronics in hybrid and electric vehicles are: System cost, power density and reliability. High temperature power device and packaging technologies increases the power density and reliability while reducing system cost. Advanced Silicon devices with synthesized high-temperature packaging technologies can achieve junction temperature as high as 200C (compared to the present limitation of 150C) eliminating the need for a low-temperature radiator and therefore these devices reduces the system cost. The silicon area needed for a power inverter with high junction temperature capability can be reduced by more than 50 - 75% thereby significantly reducing the packaging space and power device and package cost. Smaller packaging space is highly desired since multiple vehicle platforms can share the same design and therefore reducing the cost further due to economies of scale.

End of Line tests are brief set of tests intended to evaluate ECU's in order to ensure correct functioning of its intended functionality. As these tests are executed on the production line, available time to perform these tests is limited. On one hand, faster production demands require these tests and its framework to be designed in a time optimized manner. On the other hand, increase in ECU functionality translates to an increase in test's functional coverage, requiring more time. Therefore the time taken to execute the tests reaches a critical point in overall ECU production. Availability of multicore microcontrollers with increase in clock speed can increase the performance of end of line tests, but design challenges e.g. synchronization do not guarantee a linear performance increase. Therefore, design of test execution framework is absolutely critical to increase performance of test execution.

Glare-free high beams are a consistent enhancement of adaptive headlight systems for vehicles with advanced driver assist systems. A prerequisite for these are camera-based systems with the ability to recognize and classify objects such as vehicles in front or oncoming vehicles when driving at night. These objects can then be dynamically masked out of the high beam of the specially designed headlights. Since we are talking about moving objects, it is essential for the high beam to be continuously and dynamically adapted. This paper describes a modular LED matrix system for dynamically adjusting a glare-free and continuously active high beam. The main focus was on the modularity of the system and the optimization of the thermal properties of an LED matrix in order to ensure that operation was reliable under the harsh environmental conditions inside a headlight. Specific control electronics and different interconnection methods were examined.

A mechatronic approach to implementing a BLDC motor drive control system is described. The partitioning method used allows the motor power to be scaled from around 100 watts to 1 kilowatt. The chosen approach maps the required electronic functionality to different existing front-end technologies. By drawing on vast experience with back-end technologies, especially chip-on-chip assembly, it is possible to implement a system in a one-package solution. The advantages of each technology are used to achieve a cost-effective, space-saving solution.

This paper will give an overview of multicore in automotive applications, covering the trends, benefits, challenges, and implementation scenarios. The automotive silicon industry has been building multicore and multiprocessor systems for a long time. The reasons for this choice have been: increased performance, safety redundancy, increased I/O & peripheral, access to multiple architectures (performance type e.g. DSP) and technologies. In the past, multiprocessors have been mainly considered as multi-die, multi-package with simple interconnection such as serial or parallel busses with possible shared memories. The new challenge is to implement a multicore, micro-processor that combines two or more independent processors into a single package, often a single integrated circuit (IC). The multicores allow a computing device to exhibit some form of thread-level parallelism (TLP).

Connecting mobile communication channels to vehicles’ networks is currently attracting engineers in a wide range. Herein the desire of vehicle manufacturers to remotely execute software updates over the air (SOTA) within electronic control units (ECU) is probably the field of highest attention at the moment. Today software updates are typically done at vehicle service stations and connection the vehicles electronic network via the onboard diagnosis (OBD) interface to a service computer. Herby the duration of the update is invisible to the user, as this happens during standard service appointments. With introduction of SOTA, these updates become very convenient to the customer and can lead to higher customer satisfaction levels. SOTA can be made transparent to the user however the method of implementation can affect the user experience.

Recently, vehicle networks have increased complexity due to the demand for autonomous driving or connected devices. This increasing complexity requires high bandwidth. As a result, vehicle manufacturers have begun using Ethernet-based communication for high-speed links. In order to deal with the heterogeneity of such networks where legacy automotive buses have to coexist with high-speed Ethernet links vehicle manufacturers introduced a vehicle gateway system. The system uses Ethernet as a backbone between domain controllers and CAN buses for communication between internal controllers. As a central point in the vehicle, the gateway is constantly exchanging vehicle data in a heterogeneous communication environment between the existing CAN and Ethernet networks. In an in-vehicle network context where the communications are strictly time-constrained, it is necessary to measure the delay for such routing task.

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 amount of electronics in vehicles is increasing, so is the amount of power electronics circuits, like inverters for electric motor drives or dc/dc converters. The muscles of these circuits are power transistors like MOSFETs and IGBTs - in each circuit are several of them. While MOSFETs and IGBTs have advanced over the years in terms of their performance, their wide product spectrum and feature spectrum as well as cost, they are still not unbreakable, but semiconductors which are more sensitive to electrical or thermal overstress than, a relay for instance. Especially electrical overstress, like overvoltage or over current, may damage a power transistor within a short time frame. Hence, electrical overstress must be avoided when designing the power electronics circuit. However, even a power transistor in a carefully designed power electronics circuit, may still be exposed to over current, short circuit, over voltage, over temperature and so forth.

In defining innovative and cost-effective chip sets for future automotive applications, system architects need high-level tools that allow them to rapidly determine the best silicon partitioning for a given application in terms of system performance as well as cost. The tool needs to be flexible, modular, and swift such that the system designer can perform abstract simulation iterations quickly for various functional partitioning scenarios, without requiring excessive computer resources. The tool must also be portable and adaptable to provide a simulation environment suitable to systems- or car-manufacturers for in-depth applications simulation and architecture assessment. The semiconductor component definition process using such a “mission-level” design tool for the automotive application electronic valve will be demonstrated. Methods for the analysis of electronic valve control system architectures using mission-level simulation will be developed.