Managing and Configuring On-Board Diagnostics

This paper describes an embedded software solution to manage the various powertrain component and system diagnostics required for On-Board Diagnostics (OBDI and OBDII) regulatory compliance. It utilizes flexible configuration of the complex interactions between systems and components that would otherwise be very difficult to define early enough in the Engine Control Module (ECM) software process to meet lead-time requirements. This method for managing the OBD test routines and their interdependencies allows the interactions to be configured through the use of calibration tables after software verification testing has been completed. This results in higher reliability of productionized software by avoiding the need to have the interactions pre-defined and included in the software up-front, and by enabling configuration changes later in the process without affecting the software itself.