Motor vehicle communication system and method for exchanging data in a motor vehicle

• US 6,941,194 B1
• Filed: 11/19/1999
• Issued: 09/06/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/20/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Continental Automotive GmbH (Continental AG)
• Original Assignee: Siemens AG, Daimler Chrysler Company LLC (Stellantis NV)
• Inventors: Foerster, Robert, Schneider, Jutta, Hoess, Konrad, Goebel, Fridjof, Dauner, Oskar, Schneider, Sandra
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, TAN QUANG
• Application Number:
  US09/856,321
• Time in Patent Office: 2,118 Days
• Field of Search: 701/1, 701/36, 701/48, 709/100, 709/103, 709/104, 709/105, 709/110, 709/225, 709/229, 709/240
• US Class Current: 701/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/423 with centralised control, e.g. polling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A vehicle communication system has at least one processor unit (1), arranged in the vehicle, for controlling applications, a plurality of different data sources (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) which are connected to the processor unit (1), and a plurality of operator consoles (9) which are connected to the processor unit (1). Access rights with different degrees of priority to the applications are allocated to the individual operator consoles (9).

Claims

1. A communication system which has:

at least one processor unit (1), arranged in the vehicle, for controlling applications (15),

a plurality of different data sources (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) which are connected to the processor unit (1),

a plurality of operator consoles (9) which are connected to the processor unit (1) and have user interfaces for accessing the applications (9) and for data playback, and

a central system controller (17) having a priority management system (19) which allocates to the individual operator consoles (9) access rights with different degrees of priority to the applications (15).

2. The vehicle communication system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that functions (16) which are implemented on the processor unit (1) or on a data source (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) are assigned to the applications (15).

3. The vehicle communication system as claimed in claim 1, characterized by an operator console controller (20.1, 20.2) with which the individual operator consoles (9) can be individually configured.

4. The vehicle communication system as claimed in the preceding claim, characterized in that the priority management system (19) allocates to the applications (15) individual access rights to a data bus (12) and/or to the processor unit (1).

5. The vehicle communication system as claimed in the preceding claim, characterized in that the priority management system (19) allocates to the applications (15) access to the data bus (12) as a function of the loading of the data bus (12) at that time.

6. The vehicle communication system as claimed in claim 4, characterized in that when a defined load of the data bus (12) is reached or exceeded, at least one low-level application is aborted or its data transmission rate is reduced.

7. The vehicle communication system as claimed in claim 4, characterized in that the access of an application (15) to the data bus (12) can be controlled as a function of the priority of the requesting operator console (9).

8. The vehicle communication system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that the operator console controller (20.1, 20.2) allocates individual access rights to the applications (15) for the access to an operator console (9).

9. The vehicle communication system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that a user interface (22) of an operator console (9) can be configured individually by the operator console controller (20.1, 20.2).

10. A method for exchanging data in a vehicle, in which at least one processor unit (1) and a plurality of data sources (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) communicate with operator consoles (9) via a data bus (12),

different applications (15) being controlled by the processor unit (1) so that they output onto different output devices (21),

access rights to the applications (15) being allocated to the operator consoles (9),

access rights with different degrees of priority to the applications (15) being allocated to the individual operator consoles (9).

11. The method as claimed in the preceding claim, characterized in that an operator console controller (20.1, 20.2) controls one or more of the following functions individually for an operator console (9):

user prompting at the man/machine interface,

assignment of running applications or their menus to defined positions of a display device,

assignment of the access right of applications to an output device of the operator console.