Central Communication Unit of a Motor Vehicle

• US 20160374122A1
• Filed: 07/08/2016
• Published: 12/22/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
• Original Assignee: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
• Inventors: LIM, Hyung-Taek, LOTTERMANN, Christian
• Granted Patent: US 10,708,359 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/62 for transportation systems, e.g. in vehicles
• 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: H04W 4/40 for vehicles, e.g. vehicle-to-pedestrians [V2P]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 Connection setup
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/005 Moving wireless networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/12 WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks]

Abstract

A central communication unit of a motor vehicle and to a method for controlling the communication between a plurality of applications by way of such a central communication unit are provided. The central communication unit has a communication organization module, which can actively distribute the available external radio connection capacities between the central communication unit and at least one transmitting/receiving device to individual active data connections of the applications in accordance with predetermined criteria. In the central communication unit, the available external radio connection capacities are distributed among the individual data connections of the individual applications in a specific, controlled manner. The criteria for this are the demand for connection capacity and/or the priorities of the different data connections.

Claims

1. A central communication unit of a motor vehicle, comprising:

a number of connection modules for establishing a wireless data link between the motor vehicle and at least one transmitting/receiving device located outside the motor vehicle;

a connection module manager for controlling the connection modules in order to provide a suitable data link between the motor vehicle and the at least one transmitting/receiving device;

a data network for connecting a number of devices within the motor vehicle, wherein a number of applications executable on the devices can in each case utilize a data link via the central communication unit to the transmitting/receiving device;

a communication organization module which is designed such that available external connection capacities between the central communication unit and the at least one transmitting/receiving device are distributed actively in accordance with predetermined criteria to the individual active data links of the applications.

2. The central communication unit as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the communication organization module is designed such that the distribution of the external connection capacities takes place in accordance with one or more of the following criteria;

requirement for connection capacity of the different data links,

efficient distribution of the available data links to the applications,

request of the application for a data link with respect to a priority of the application for the data link, a bandwidth, a latency and/or an error rate.

3. The central communication unit as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the communication organization module has a connection register in which the individual data links are registered with one or more of the following parameters;

identification designator of the data link,

allocation of a radio channel to the respective data link,

bandwidth allocated to the data link or data rate of the radio channel, respectively,

current bandwidth or data rate of the radio channel,

current error rate of the radio channel,

current latency of the radio channel,

data transmission costs of the radio channel.

4. The central communication unit as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the communication organization module has an application profile register in which requirements of the applications are registered with one or more of the following parameters;

identification designator of the application,

allocation of a data link to the respective application,

bandwidth or data rate granted to the application,

application class,

priority for a data link via a particular radio channel,

minimum data rate of the application,

maximum data rate of the application,

requirements for error rate of the data link,

requirements for latency of the data link.

5. The central communication unit as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the connection modules are designed for establishing radio channels according to different standards,

the connection module manager controls the radio channels in accordance with predetermined criteria, which are availability, bandwidth, costs, latency, error rate.

6. The central communication unit as claimed in claim 5, wherein the different standards are WLAN, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G/UMTS, HSPA, 4G/LTE, and ETSI ITS-G5.

7. A method for controlling communication between a number of applications which are executed on devices, connected to a data network, of a motor vehicle, by a central communication unit, wherein at least one transmitting/receiving device is located outside the motor vehicle, wherein:

the number of applications are communicable with the transmitting/receiving device in each case via a data link via the central communication unit, and

available external connection capacities between the central communication unit and the at least one transmitting/receiving device are distributed actively in accordance with predetermined criteria to individual active data links of the applications by a communication organization module.

8. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein:

the central communication unit communicates with the at least one transmitting/receiving device via a radio channel,

a number of radio channels are establishable in accordance with different standards simultaneously or successively and the radio channels are controlled in accordance with predetermined criteria which are availability, bandwidth, costs, latency, error rate.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein the different standards include WLAN, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G/UMTS, HSPA, 4G/LTE, and ETSI ITS-G5.

10. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein the central communication unit communicates with the number of devices of the motor vehicle via a cable-connected network.

11. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein the communication organization module monitors the data flow of the individual data links.

12. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein an application for setting up a data link sends a connection request to the communication organization module with which predetermined parameters of the desired data link are transmitted.

13. A motor vehicle, comprising:

a central communication unit;

devices, on which a number of applications are executable, which can in each case utilize a data link via the central communication unit to at least one external transmitting/receiving device;

a data network connecting the devices and the central communication unit,

wherein the central communication unit comprises;

a number of connection modules for establishing a wireless data link between the motor vehicle and the at least one transmitting/receiving device located outside the motor vehicle;

a connection module manager for controlling the connection modules in order to provide a suitable data link between the motor vehicle and the at least one transmitting/receiving device;

a communication organization module which is designed such that available external connection capacities between the central communication unit and the at least one transmitting/receiving device are distributed actively in accordance with predetermined criteria to the individual active data links of the applications