Design of a High Efficiency In-Vehicle Network with a Single ECU for a Network (SEN)

Modern day vehicles have about 70 Electronic Control Units that are networked using CAN, LIN, MOST or K-Line protocols. All these protocols suffer from some common disadvantages like limited baud rate, limited bandwidth, limited networking length, complex software algorithms, high power consumption and queuing of messages. Wiring, ECU connectors and harness also become complex and bulky owing to the large number of ECUs. This paper proposes a new In-Vehicle network with a Single ECU for a Network (SEN). Rather than employing nearly 20 ECUs for each vehicle network (Body and Chassis), a single parent ECU shall control all the activities in that network. Wiring complexity shall be reduced by 40 % by reducing in the pin count of ECUs. This can be achieved by using interface modules for communication of ECUs with sensors and actuators. Proposed architecture employs cutting-edge technology which provides data rates that are 1000 times higher that of CAN while still maintaining real-time behavior of the network. Power consumption is drastically reduced due to simple, yet powerful software algorithms of SEN. Combination of several strategies is employed for making SEN a better nominee for future vehicle networks.