Autonomous Vehicle Development as a System of Systems and Constituent Systems Networking

Driverless vehicles are complex to develop due to the number of systems required for safe and secure autonomous operation. Autonomous vehicles embody the definition of a system of systems as they incorporate several systems to enable functions like perception, decision-making, vehicle controls, and external communication. Constituent systems are often developed by different vendors globally which introduces challenges during the development process. Additionally, as the fleet of autonomous vehicles scales, optimization of onboard and off-board communication between the constituent systems becomes critical.In this paper, we propose tailoring the system of systems Model for autonomous vehicles. The model serves as the governing framework for the development of constituent systems. It also coordinates between the systems with feedback in the loop to promote awareness of changes or conflicts in requirements in any of the constituent systems. It's essential for the SoS model to accommodate various development approaches that are used for hardware, and software such as Agile, or Vee-models. As for the communication between constituent systems, Named Data Networking (NDN) is compared to SOME/IP in data Multicast showing similar performance with a slight delay. Additionally, a queuing model for certificates authentication comparing the named certificate approach with the traditional approach. The model shows the potential benefits of named certificates when the autonomous vehicles are scaled. We also proposed using named J1939 signals to reduce complexities and integration efforts when multiple on-board or off-board systems request vehicle signals.