AUTomotive Open System Architecture - concepts, benefits and challenges

Distributed embedded systems in automotive application are composed by a set of interconnected computer nodes (Electronic Control Units - ECUs), with different hardware and software architectures, which communicate through a communication protocol under a physical channel. In general, ECUs are designed by different suppliers. This summarized description hides a great set of complexity regarding system design which is increasing with emerging automotive applications. Considering such design complexity, nowadays there are some challenges in the automotive industry, for instance: manage increasing system complexity with integration of functional modules from multiples suppliers; improve the flexibility for future modification (software update and upgrade); enable error detection in early design phase; enable scalability of solutions and improve the availability and reliability of the electronic system. Based on these drawbacks and challenges a consortium - called AUTomotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR) - was created to establish an open standard for automotive embedded system design that will provide a common software infrastructure for all application domains, independently from the associated hardware of the ECU. This paper will present the AUTOSAR approach discussing its main concepts as well as its benefits and challenges in its adoption.