Modeling and timing analysis of vehicle functions distributed over switched ethernet

This paper proposes an approach to model switched Ethernet communication within a model- and component-based software development framework for vehicular distributed embedded systems. The paper also presents a method to extract the network timing model from the systems that use switched Ethernet networks. In order to provide a proof of concept, an existing industrial component model and its tool suite, namely RCM and Rubus-ICE respectively, are extended by implementing the modeling technique, the timing model extraction method and response-time analysis of the Ethernet AVB protocol. The extensions to RCM are backward compatible with the modeling and end-to-end timing analysis of traditional in-vehicle networks and legacy (previously developed) vehicular distributed embedded systems. Furthermore, the paper discusses the implementation and test strategy used in this work. Finally, the usability of the modeling approach and implemented timing analysis is demonstrated by modeling and time analyzing a vehicular application case study with the extended component model and tool suite.