Today, the growing role of electronics in automobiles has gradually resulted not just in technological advancement but an increase in the complexity and cost of a vehicle. Especially in price conscious markets like Indian sub-continent, technologies like motorcycle Immobilizers are not seeing light in low-cost automobile (which make up to 75% of the market share) sector because of the reasons like cost of OEM integration and less secure aftermarket products.
For addition of such a new functionality like vehicle Immobilizer with already existing Engine Control Unit (ECU) there is a need of efficient and innovative way that helps create an easily integrable low-cost system without compromise on its performance, quality, reliability and security.
In this paper we propose an implemented unique embedded software integration methodology, in which our company proprietary immobilizer software is integrated with ECU software of tier-1 supplier keeping immobilizer software's internal functionality and code structure untraceable and incomprehensible to the supplier.
This was possible by using hexadecimal code integration, which was considered after feasibility analysis of several possible methodologies. The selected method involved minimal code changes in supplier ECU software; whereas memory allocations, c-script for array creation and immobilizer software development activities were carried on the immobilizer side which resulted in an affordable vehicle equipped with highly secure reliable low-cost ECU-Immobilizer unit.