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This article describes the effects of a future 42V automotive electrical system on the vehicle electronics, focusing mainly on the consequences for power semiconductors and their associated technologies. Taking the example of a door module, it then shows how existing 14V loads can be operated on the 42V PowerNet and what advantages result for operation of adjusted 42V loads. The following different problem-solving approaches are presented for typical loads such as power windows, electrically positioned and heated outside mirrors, and central locking: Power windows: A test motor specially developed for the 42V supply is continuously operated directly from the electrical system using suitable power semiconductors. Central locking: A conventional 14V motor is operated at 42V, its operating point being set using pulse width modulation (PWM). Remaining door module: Smaller 14V mirror motors and the control electronics are supplied from a second 14V system.

Software complexity of vehicles is constantly growing especially with additional autonomous driving features being introduced. This increases the risk for bugs in the system, when the car is delivered. According to a car manufacturer, more than 90% of availability problems corresponding to Electronic Control Unit (ECU) functionality are either caused by software bugs or they can be resolved by applying software updates to overcome hardware issues. The main concern are sporadic errors which are not caught during the development phase since their trigger condition is too unlikely to occur or is not covered by the tests. For such systems, there is a need of safe and secure infield diagnosis. In this paper we present a tool software architecture with remote access, which facilitates standard read/write access, an efficient channel interface for communication and file I/O, and continuous trace.

The C166 family, based on a 16-bit core; it is nowadays an enormous success in automotive, in particular in PowerTrain. This component is the right answer for the automotive real time applications of today. It is with both, automotive customer requirements and a long automotive experience in semi-conductors that this new generation 32-bit family is borne. The objective of this document is to provide and comment on automotive requirements in terms of the new micro-controller, to show the benefits for the applications and explain how the AUDO architecture fulfils these requirements.

The increasingly stringent requirements in relation to emission reduction and onboard diagnostics are pushing the Chinese automotive industry toward more innovative solutions and a rapid increase in electronic control performance. To manage the system complexity the architecture will require being well structure on hardware and software level. The paper introduces GEMS-K1 (Gasoline Engine Management System - Kit 1). GEMS-K1 is a platform being compliant with Euro IV emission regulation for gasoline engines. The application software is developed using modeling language, the code is automatically generated from the model. The driver software has a well defined structure including microcontroller abstraction layer and ECU abstraction layer. The hardware is following design rules to be robust, 100% testable and easy to manufacture. The electronic components use the latest innovation in terms of architecture and technologies.

The automotive industry is moving from fossil carburant to electric drive trains due to the stringent CO2 reduction policies. In this context, the electric energy storage becomes one of the key parameters of successful rolling out electrified vehicles. Typical battery management systems comprises of battery cells measurement and monitoring, balancing function, temperature monitoring, together with the State of Charge and State of Health estimations based on the given measurements. Together with the functions above, a robust internal IC communication protocol is one of the key parameters to guarantee battery performance as well as safety. This paper focuses on the automotive battery communication system. On one side, the importance of the communication system and its impact in the EDT (electric drive train) is discussed including safety aspects. Later on, the different communication methods up to date are analyzed to further understand their limitations.

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.

The increasing legal requirements for safety, emission reduction, fuel economy and onboard diagnostic systems are forcing the market to increase complexity. This complexity must not be a reason for slowing down the introduction of new systems. For efficiency, car manufacturers and system suppliers want to focus on their core competencies and leave the micro-controller complexity to silicon vendors. Competition forces system suppliers to jump to the most “function/cost” effective solution. For this reason it is very dangerous to move in the direction of specific solutions which require a large amount of effort to modify. Therefore the market goes in the direction of standards with clear interfaces. The approach presented overcomes these obstacles by introducing a Configurable I/O System (CIOS) layer. The CIOS encompasses basic software driver objects for engine management systems encapsulating the standard sensors and actuators.

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.

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.

Functional safe products conforming to the ISO 26262 standard are getting more important for automotive applications wherein electronic takes more and more response for safety relevant operations. Consequently safety mechanisms are needed and implemented in order to reach defined functional safety targets. To prove their effectiveness diagnostic coverage provides a measurable quantity. A straight forward safety mechanism for sensor systems can be established by redundant signal paths measuring the same physical quantity and subsequently performing an independent output difference-check that decides if the data can be transmitted or an error message shall be sent. This paper focuses on the diagnostic coverage figure calculation of such data correlation-checks for linear sensors which are also shown in ISO 26262 part5:2011 ANNEX D2.10.2.

Classic vehicle production had limitations in bringing the driving commands to the actuators for vehicle motion (engine, steering and braking). Steering columns, hydraulic tubes or steel cables needed to be placed between the driver and actuator. Change began with the introduction of e-gas systems. Mechanical cables were replaced by thin, electric signal wires. The technical solutions and legal standardizations for addressing the steering and braking systems, were not defined at this time. Today, OEMs are starting E/E-Architecture transformations for manifold reasons and now have the chance to remove the long hydraulic tubes for braking and the solid metal columns used for steering. X-by-wire is the way forward and allows for higher Autonomous Driving (AD) levels for automated driving vehicles. This offers new opportunities to design the vehicle in-cabin space. This paper will start with the introduction of x-by-wire technologies.

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.

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.

In the case of a side impact the decision to deploy an airbag has to be taken much faster as it would be required for a front impact. Furthermore, there is a significant spread of the measurable acceleration depending on which pillars of the cars side are hit. Measuring the pressure inside the door as a direct result of an impact, the deformation of the door becomes observable. Based on pressure measurements side impacts can be detected much faster and more reliable. Therefore side airbag pressure sensors are established as add-on or replacement for side airbag acceleration sensors. This paper will present a Side Airbag Chip Set comprising of a side airbag pressure sensor and a satellite receiver. The system architecture and the partitioning between a single chip solution for the side airbag pressure sensor module plus the compatible satellite receiver will be described.

Driven by the growing internet and remote connectivity of automobiles, combined with the emerging trend to automated driving, the importance of security for automotive systems is massively increasing. Although cyber security is a common part of daily routines in the traditional IT domain, necessary security mechanisms are not yet widely applied in the vehicles. At first glance, this may not appear to be a problem as there are lots of solutions from other domains, which potentially could be re-used. But substantial differences compared to an automotive environment have to be taken into account, drastically reducing the possibilities for simple reuse. Our contribution is to address automotive electronics engineers who are confronted with security requirements. Therefore, it will firstly provide some basic knowledge about IT security and subsequently present a selection of automotive specific security use cases.

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 newly released Distributed System Interface 3 (DSI3) Bus Standard specification defines three modulation levels form which 16 valid symbols are coded. This complex structure is best decoded with symbol pattern recognition. This paper proposes a simplification of the correlation score calculation that sharply reduces the required number of operations. Additionally, the paper describes how the pattern recognition is achieved using correlation scores and a decoding algorithm. The performance of this method is demonstrated by mean of simulations with different load models between the master and the sensors and varying noise injection on the channel. We prove than the pattern recognition can decode symbols without any error for up to 24dBm.

The migration of many vehicle security features from mechanical solutions (lock and key) to electronic-based systems (transponder and RF transceiver) has led to the need for purely electrically operated locking mechanisms. One such example is a steering column lock, which locks and unlocks the steering wheel movement via a reversible electric motor. The safety case for this system (in respect to ISO26262) is highly complex, as there is no single safe state of the steering column lock hardware because there is a wider system-level interlock required. The employed control platform uses ASIL D capable multicore microcontroller hardware, together with the first implementation of AutoSAR® version 4.0 operating system to demonstrate a real-world usage of the newly specified encapsulation and monitoring mechanisms using the multicore extensions of AutoSAR and those of PharOS.

Today the majority of power electronics is developed based on the requirements set by the main fields of application e.g. power generation, power supply, industrial drive and traction. With introduction to automotive applications new requirements have to be taken into account. This paper discusses how interconnection technologies for power semiconductors can be improved to meet the demand for higher temperature capability in HEV applications.