LIN Protocol Conformance Test

Networking is an important technology in today's vehicles: Up to 100 electronic control units are interlinked through various communication protocols such as CAN, LIN, MOST, etc. As such communication protocols represent a “standard” component in vehicles which is assumed to provide a specified functionality regardless who the manufacturer is. Unfortunately 10 years of practical experience show that implementations of communication protocol specifications done by different manufacturers in most cases are not compliant a priori. Luckily experience of automotive OEMs together with their suppliers and silicon manufacturers have proven that conformance testing is a very effective means to avoid interoperability problems in mixed suppliers automotive systems.

The following paper describes for LIN protocol the process of conformance test specification, conformance test suite implementation and the experiences gained while performing such tests.