Design Tools for FlexRay Applications and Networks

FlexRay is a new communication protocol that has just been introduced in the first automotive series application. The technology enables advanced automotive applications by providing deterministic transmission at speed rates of 10 Mbit/s. The task of designing a FlexRay system is, however, quite complex and it surely does not become easier if you also have to develop an application or to adapt one for FlexRay. Therefore, a supportive design tool has to reduce complexity as much as possible. This paper plans to examine the milestones of successful FlexRay network planning in combination with application design. Crucial design steps are highlighted and design principles are discussed in the context of rapid prototyping versus series applications. Based on these findings, the conceptual work on a tool-framework is presented. The solution is a symbiosis of tools ¹ cooperating smoothly with each other and enabling functional modeling and simulation, FlexRay network planning, detailed timing analysis, the generation of configuration files for basic software layers and automatic application code generation.