Influence of the Accuracy and CAN Frame Period of the Steering Wheel Angle Sensor (SAS) on the Trajectory of a Steer-by-Wire-Equipped Car

With the popularization of active safety systems, autonomous driving, and Steer-by-Wire (SBW) technology, steering wheel angle sensors (SAS) have begun to play a key role in these systems. It is responsible for measuring the angle and angular velocity of the steering wheel and sending these data via a bus to the cooperating devices. For this reason, automakers are making increasingly demanding requirements that are difficult for sensor suppliers to meet. These requirements describe the metrological properties of the sensor, but their influence on the quality of car control is not clear. It is impossible to directly determine whether systems that use these sensors work properly and efficiently. Therefore, the question that needs to be asked is whether and to what extent sensor parameters such as accuracy and data transmission period affect the Steer-by-Wire car’s trajectory and behavior during actual driving? For this purpose, a test bench was built based on the CarMaker and CANoe software using virtual test drives. It was used to perform a series of tests for different combinations of sensor accuracies and CAN frame periods, based on which errors were determined, and their influence on the number of knocked down cones during slalom performance.