A Transceiver Front End for Electronic Control Units in FlexRay-Based Automotive Communication Systems

This paper presents an in-car networking transceiver front end that is compliant with FlexRay automotive electronic standards. A low-voltage differential-signaling-like transmitter is proposed to drive the twisted pair of the bus. Furthermore, a three-comparator scheme is used to carry out bit slicing and state recognition at the receiver end. In order to resist process and temperature variation, a 20-MHz clock generator with process, supply voltage, and temperature compensation is proposed in this paper. A prototype system as well as a chip implemented by using a typical 0.18 ¿m single-poly six-metal CMOS process is reported in this paper. The proposed prototypical transceiver front end has been tested by the thermo chamber and a FlexRay development board to certify its operation in the [-40°C-+125°C] temperature range and FlexRay standards. The power consumption of the whole chip is 43.01 mW at a 10 Mbit/s throughput. The core area of this design is 0.117 mm
²
. The maximal throughput of the proposed prototypical transceiver front end can reach 40 Mbit/s.