A real-time Ethernet prototype platform for automotive applications

The increasing number of driver assistance, infotainment and entertainment systems in automobiles results in higher requirements for bandwidth, fault tolerance and timing behaviour concerning the in-vehicle communication structure. In future, in-vehicle networks based on current technologies will reach their limits due to insufficient scalability and complexity. Real-time (RT) Ethernet is a new, scalable approach to reduce the complexity of these networks significantly. This paper demonstrates the architecture of a RT Ethernet prototype platform based on an ARM centred system-on-chip, which achieves timing and bandwidth characteristics of a typical future automotive application. It is based on an advanced interrupt driven architecture.