Synchronizing Real-Time Control in Centralized Automotive E/E Architectures

Automotive technologies have been rapidly evolving with the introduction of electric powertrains, Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Over-The-Air (OTA) upgradability. Existing decentralized architectures are not an optimal choice for these applications, due to significant increases in cost and complexity. The transition to centralized architectures enables heavy computation to be delegated to a limited number of powerful Electronic Control Units (ECUs) called domain or zone controllers. The remaining ECUs, known as smart actuators, will perform well defined and specific tasks, receiving new parameters from the dedicated domain/zone controller over a network. Network bandwidth and time synchronization are the two major challenges in this transition. New automotive standards have been developed to address these challenges. Automotive Ethernet and Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) are two standards that are well-suited for centralized architectures. This paper presents a synchronization mechanism that leverages these two standards to establish precise control synchronization between the centralized ECUs and the smart actuators. Additionally, a testing method is introduced to evaluate the synchronization performance between the centralized ECU and the smart actuator within a TSN network.