For upcoming applications in the automotive domain, such as safety-critical applications, high dependable communication systems are needed. FlexRay already provides high transmission speeds and a set of fault-tolerance functions.
In several non-automotive industries, the Time-Triggered Architecture (TTA) has already been established as means to implement safety-critical systems. The TTA has properties that have been proven theoretically, making development of safety-critical systems easier. FlexRay can be used as communication protocol in the TTA.
This paper shows how to implement additional safety functions on top of FlexRay, which provide consistent communication for use in critical hard real-time applications.
The COM-Accelerator is designed to relieve the host CPU by implementing the fault-tolerant communication layer in hardware. Therefore, the host does not need to handle the data exchange itself and is able to provide higher performance to the applications.
The proven mechanisms of the TTA combined with FlexRay provide safety with flexibility and cost effectiveness for automotive industry standard.