Increasing energy efficiency of automotive E/E-architectures with Intelligent Communication Controllers for FlexRay

When a modern vehicle is in use, its interconnected Electronic Control Units (ECUs) are effectively always on. By temporarily deactivating those ECUs, whose functions are not needed, we can contribute to a vehicle's energy efficiency and lower its fuel consumption as well as its emissions. FlexRay is an automotive bus system typically used to interconnect high-performance ECUs. FlexRay, however, does not support the deactivation of single nodes. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Intelligent Communication Controllers, which allow us to perform a demand dependent deactivation of FlexRay ECUs. We also outline an FPGA based prototypical implementation.