Wireless communication extension for can based electrical architectures
First Claim
1. An electrical architecture (EA) comprising:
- a plurality of electronic control units (ECUs) interconnected by a wired CAN bus, wherein some of the ECU'"'"'s are wireless ECUs (WECUs); and
a plurality of wired and wireless peripherals connected to the CAN bus using either wireless or wired communications or both, wherein communications including wireless communications between the ECUs and the peripherals is bidirectional, and wherein CAN inter-WECU messages are wirelessly offloaded to reduce CAN bus load and increase robustness and resilience to CAN bus faults.
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Abstract
A method for communicating using a hybrid vehicle communications network including a combination of wired and wireless electronic control units (ECUs) and wired and wireless peripherals. The network includes a plurality of ECUs that include a plurality of wireless ECUs. The network also includes a plurality of peripheral devices, where one or more of the peripheral devices receive commands from one or more of the ECUs and one or more of the peripheral devices provide signals to the ECUs, and where the plurality of peripherals include at least one wireless peripheral. Wireless transmission signals transmitted from one of the wireless peripherals is received by all of the wireless ECUs. The method performs an arbitration process where a message provided from one of the wireless ECUs is placed on a communications backbone based on a quality of the transmission signal from the wireless peripheral.
10 Citations
21 Claims
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1. An electrical architecture (EA) comprising:
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a plurality of electronic control units (ECUs) interconnected by a wired CAN bus, wherein some of the ECU'"'"'s are wireless ECUs (WECUs); and a plurality of wired and wireless peripherals connected to the CAN bus using either wireless or wired communications or both, wherein communications including wireless communications between the ECUs and the peripherals is bidirectional, and wherein CAN inter-WECU messages are wirelessly offloaded to reduce CAN bus load and increase robustness and resilience to CAN bus faults. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. An electrical architecture (EA) for a vehicle, said EA comprising:
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a plurality of electronic control units (ECUs) interconnected by a wired CAN bus, wherein some of the ECU'"'"'s are wireless ECUs (WECUs); and a plurality of wired and wireless peripherals connected to the CAN bus using either wireless or wired communications or both, wherein communications including wireless communications between the ECUs and the peripherals is bidirectional, wherein the WECUs convey information wirelessly from and to the peripherals by employing wireless channel diversity where messages from a peripheral are received by all of the WECUs and a message to a peripheral is transmitted by all of the WECUs, and wherein the plurality of peripherals include one or more of switches, sensors and actuators, and wherein error-correcting codes are employed on the data on top of the CAN protocol to increase reliability. - View Dependent Claims (18)
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19. An electrical architecture (EA) comprising:
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a plurality of electronic control units (ECUs) interconnected by a wired CAN bus, wherein some of the ECU'"'"'s are wireless ECUs (WECUs); and a plurality of wired and wireless peripherals connected to the CAN bus using either wireless or wired communications or both, wherein communications including wireless communications between the ECUs and the peripherals is bidirectional, and wherein the WECUs use a CAN arbitration process to reduce traffic over the CAN bus and the CAN arbitration process employs iteration to identify a WECU with a best residual quality of the received signal where only that WECU transmits at a particular iteration.
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20. An electrical architecture (EA) comprising:
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a plurality of electronic control units (ECUs) interconnected by a wired CAN bus, wherein some of the ECU'"'"'s are wireless ECUs (WECUs); and a plurality of wired and wireless peripherals connected to the CAN bus using either wireless or wired communications or both, wherein communications including wireless communications between the ECUs and the peripherals is bidirectional, and wherein a transmit power of the WECUs is larger than a transmit power of the peripherals and is increased as the number of wireless peripherals increases.
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21. An electrical architecture (EA) comprising:
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a plurality of electronic control units (ECUs) interconnected by a wired CAN bus, wherein some of the ECU'"'"'s are wireless ECUs (WECUs); and a plurality of wired and wireless peripherals connected to the CAN bus using either wireless or wired communications or both, wherein communications including wireless communications between the ECUs and the peripherals is bidirectional, wherein multiple CAN buses operate over wireless channels where the multiple wired CAN buses can be extended with multiple wireless channels simultaneously, and wherein error-correcting codes are employed on the data on top of the CAN protocol to increase reliability.
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Specification