Interrupt-Enabled Physical Layer Collision Avoidance for 10BASE-T1S Automotive Ethernet

With the advancement of vehicular technology, autonomous driving and connected car technologies have emerged, leading to a significant increase in the number of sensors and data traffic. To address this growing demand, automotive Ethernet, which offers higher bandwidth for data transmission, has been introduced. The traditional domain-based architecture commonly used in connecting Electronic Control Units (ECUs) is transitioning to a zone-based architecture, which organizes and connects networks based on the physical location of ECUs. In the zone-based architecture, multiple networks are integrated into a high-speed backbone. In this article, we propose an integrated Ethernet-based network for vehicles that leverages automotive Ethernet not only in the backbone but also in sub-networks with lower data rates. We introduce interrupts to the Physical Layer Collision Avoidance (PLCA) protocol in 10BASE-T1S automotive Ethernet, which can be applied in a bus topology, effectively replacing existing communication protocols. This modification enables low-latency transmission for critical packets. Our analysis indicates that the proposed PLCA-with-Interrupt scheme allows for the transmission of express packets with smaller and more predictable latency. Furthermore, we observe no performance degradation when the interrupt ratio remains below 25%.