Firmware over the air ad-hoc network, FOTANET

The automotive industry is growing rapidly. Many innovations are being focused on the automotive industry and the connected vehicles concept is becoming more reality than ever. The vehicle is being connected to the cloud for more features and better control. A previous paper, “Firmware Over the Air for Automotive, FOTAMOTIVE” was published [1]. One of the main challenges for FOTAMOTIVE is the cost of the bandwidth for over the air updates. This paper introduces a new solution to download the update files without the need of a connection to the internet. This new solution consists of downloading the update files from other vehicles within reasonable range that already have the update files via the Ad-Hoc Network architecture proposed in this paper. We are presenting Fotanet architecture, process flow chart, system components, vehicle cloud management, simulation and results. Based on the statistical data collected, an average visit to the dealer cost $150. The cost for an ECU update via Fotanet is free, but there are still some development and maintenance costs to the OEM. These costs are spread out to how many vehicles/ECU are being updated. The more updates there are, the less the cost will be. For example, if it cost one million dollars to develop and maintain Fotamotive and Fotanet, the cost per update would be $10 for 100k updates and $1 for 1 million updates. Based on the statistical data collected on the average number of vehicles sold by various OEMs, the cost is expected to be minimal.