New kid on the block: Scheduling Analysis improves quality and reliability of ECUs, Busses and Networks

Today, electronics are an indispensable part of modern vehicles. Cars easily contain more than 50 embedded control units (ECUs) connected by different data buses and gateways. At the same time, system performance and reliability requirements for advanced vehicle functions are increasing together with the need to lower total costs. These requirements are challenged by the ever increasing system complexity. A new class of Scheduling Analysis tools supports the developer in system performance optimization, integration and verification. We briefly present the theoretical background of Scheduling Analysis, followed by lessons learned from several industrial case studies in which OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers have successfully applied Scheduling Analysis to verify the timing and performance of ECUs and CAN / FlexRay Networks and to cost-optimize architectures. 1