Fault tracing in the data bus system of a vehicle

• US 7,894,949 B2
• Filed: 05/01/2009
• Issued: 02/22/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/03/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
• Original Assignee: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
• Inventors: Stocker, Konrad, Kuttig, Florian
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran; Khoi
• Assistant Examiner(s): Figueroa; Jaime
• Application Number:
  US12/434,193
• Publication Number:
  US 20090271665A1
• Time in Patent Office: 662 Days
• Field of Search: 701/1, 701/29, 701/48, 701/102, 701/114, 701/33, 714/48, 710/100, 710/104, 710/110, 340/438, 340/500, 340/514, 702/183, 702/184, 702/187, 702/185
• US Class Current: 701/29
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/106 using time related information in packets, e.g. by adding timestamps
• 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 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

A data bus system of a motor vehicle includes at least one first and one second control device which communicates with each another via at least one data bus. In order to be able to localize errors more easily, the system has at least one identification device which provides an identifier to each of the messages sent by the first and the second control device. The first control device receives a first message, and the identification device causes the first control device to provide the message sent therefrom with a first identifier. The second control device receives the message sent by the first control device with the first identifier, and the identification device causes the second control device to provide the message sent therefrom with a second identifier.

Claims

1. A motor vehicle, comprising:

a data bus system of the motor vehicle, the data bus system including at least a first and a second control device, the at least first and second control devices communicating with one another over at least one data bus;

at least one identification device of the data bus system, the identification device providing an identifier to each message sent by the first and the second control device, wherein such identifiers unambiguously identify message paths along the data bus system;

wherein the first control device receives a first message, and the identification device causes the first control device to provide a message sent therefrom with a first identifier; and

wherein the second control device receives the message with the first identifier sent from the first control device, the identification device causing the second control device to provide a message sent therefrom with a second identifier.

2. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein when the first control device receives a message having an identifier that is new to the first control device, the identification device causes the message sent from the first control device to be provided with a new first identifier.

3. The vehicle according to claim 2, wherein when the second control device recognizes that the new first identifier is new to the second control device, the identification device causes the message sent from the second control device to be provided with a new second identifier.

4. The vehicle according to claim 1, further comprising at least one fault detection device, the at least one fault detection device detecting faults during at least one of an operation of the vehicle and an operation of the control devices of the vehicle;

and

wherein the fault detection device comprises an identification memory in which at least one of a last used identifier and an identifier of a last processed message is stored.

5. The vehicle according to claim 4, wherein the first control device is operatively configured with a first fault detection device and the second control device is operatively configured with a second fault detection device.

6. The vehicle according to claim 5, wherein, after detection of a fault, the first fault detection device causes a message sent out by the first control device to be provided with a first fault identification, and

wherein after the detection of a fault, the second fault detection device causes the message sent out by the second control device to be provided with a second fault identification.

7. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the identification device is provided in each of the first and the second control devices.

8. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the identification device generates an identifier in the form of a Unique Identifier.

9. The vehicle according to claim 7, wherein the identification device generates an identifier in the form of a Unique Identifier.

10. The vehicle according to claim 9, wherein the Unique Identifier is a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) or a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID).

11. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the identifier includes a time stamp.

12. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the first and the second control device each include a memory in which received identifiers are stored, and further wherein when an identifier stored in the memory is received again instead of an earlier identifier, the identifier is prevented from changing.

13. The vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the first and the second control devices independently monitor their respective functioning for fault detection.

14. A method for program-controlled tracing of a fault in a vehicle data bus system, the data bus system comprising at least three control devices which are operably configured to communicate with one another by way of a data bus, the data bus system including an identification device providing an identifier to each of the messages sent out by the three control devices, wherein such identifiers unambiguously identify message paths along the data bus system;

the method comprising the acts of;

receiving a first message in a first of the three control devices;

sending a message out from the first control device with a first identifier provided by the identification device;

receiving the message with the first identifier in a second of the three control devices;

sending a message out from the second control device with a second identifier provided by the identification device; and

communicating with the control devices by way of a fault tracing device in order to determine whether the message sent out by the first control device and provided with the first identifier as a first fault identification has been processed by one of the second control device or a third of the three control devices.

15. The method according to claim 14, wherein the communication with the control devices via the fault tracing device is carried out in a vehicle repair shop.

16. The method according to claim 15, wherein the communication with the control devices via the fault tracing device is carried out in the vehicle.