The development of state-of-the-art electronic control units
(ECU) for vehicles is not only characterized by rapidly growing
functionality and rising quality requirements but also by the
increasing interconnection of various ECUs. The optimization of the
specific ECU function cannot be evaluated any more without
considering the effect of this function on other ECUs.
These technical requirements face economic issues like faster
design cycles at decreasing costs. It is clear that to alleviate
this critical situation, manufacturers must adopt modern
development tools, which accompany the design process of ECUs
throughout all stages.
Function development and testing of ECUs is still primarily done
with specially equipped test vehicles. This approach, however, is
costly and time consuming. A guarantee of safe functionality of the
ECU at all possible operating conditions of a vehicle certainly
cannot be made on the basis of test drives. This is even more
difficult in the case of several interconnected ECUs. The
manufacturer typically purchases ECUs from different suppliers and
it is his task to guarantee the operating safety of the vehicle
with all its various ECUs.
Here enter the benefits of hardware-in-the-loop simulation. They
allow a complete test of ECUs at all driving situations. Test
systems for this purpose are of course not new and are available on
the market. However, current test systems are only designed for one
single ECU. In this paper, a test platform for a system of
interconnected ECUs for a commercial vehicle will be introduced
which permits the evaluation of the correct interaction of all
involved ECUs.