Integrated Fault Tolerant System for Automotive Bus Networks

In automotive bus networks all the electronic components are interconnected to transmit and receive signals. The number of vehicles equipped with electronic components is increasing rapidly by replacing traditional mechanical and hydraulic systems. Nowadays most cars are functioning properly via many Electronic Control Units (ECUs), sensors and actuators, among which more than 2 500 electronic signals are exchanged. There are several bus systems that have been developed for automotive bus systems to satisfy the different requirements of automotive applications: Local Interconnection Network (LIN), Controller Area Network (CAN), FlexRay and Media Oriented System Transport (MOST). However, there are more demands of combining these different bus networks in order to increase the efficiency and safety of the vehicle systems. The integrated automotive bus system, which communicates with software/hardware components on the different bus systems in a car, is more challenging problem. The discussion on how to interconnect those automotive bus networks in a fault tolerant way is addressed in the paper.