Field reprogramming of electronic control units (ECU) via the serial communication bus for feature upgrades, software fixes is an area which has potential cost impacts to the OEMs. Due to increasing software complexity, feature content, up-integration considerations for ECUs in next generation vehicle platforms the expectation is for flash memory requirements to increase significantly in the future. A reduced reprogramming cycle that builds on top of the existing system framework would be of interest from a cost and timing aspects. Additionally deployment of the next generation of telematics based remote programming techniques would also benefit from shorter reprogramming time in ECUs. An approach to address field reprogramming time would be to migrate to high baud rate communication protocols like FlexRay or Ethernet from the traditional CAN based systems currently in use.
In this paper an alternative or complementary approach is proposed that would consider targeted programming on software modules instead of the complete application software when multiple ECUs in a vehicle platform share a common software partition/ framework. This approach could be explored in AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) based environment. AUTOSAR which has been jointly developed by OEMs, suppliers and tool vendors, is becoming a defacto standard for open automotive software architecture. The AUTOSAR software partition and layered architecture provide a capability to assist field reprogramming. By applying some enhancement to the memory partitioning/linking in an AUTOSAR-based ECU this option could potentially assist software component based reprogramming independent of the complete application software