Doing More with Less Wiring: Mission-Critical and Intelligent Communication Protocols for Future Vehicles Using Power Lines

随着汽车领域自动化任务的出现，车载通信的发展越来越重要，并受到新的应用。虽然有线和无线通信已被广泛用于支持各种应用，但大多数具有关键任务性质的车载应用，如制动和发动机控制，仍然倾向于使用专用有线网络进行可靠和安全的传输。数据布线的关键挑战之一是促进增加的设备的互连性，例如，传感器和电子控制单元（ECU），有效地创建了一个响应延迟低、可靠性高、复杂性低的车载网络。这些电线的空间需求、重量和安装成本可能变得很大，特别是在未来的车辆中，这些车辆是高度复杂的电子系统。考虑到车辆组件、传感器和ECU已经连接到电源线，我们将最近用于物理层车载通信的车辆电源线应用于本提案中的车载网络。以空气质量流量传感器为例，它有一根电源线和两根信号线，用电源线通信代替目前的信号线将是高效的，因此可以减少66%的布线。车载电力线通信（VPLC）的发展可以为车载网络提供非常低的复杂性和自由的平台，这对于特别是未来车辆的应用的日益增长的需求是理想的。然而，新兴的VPLC受到缺乏协议支持的限制，这对实际部署和确保关键任务通信构成了重大挑战。下面的例子说明了这个建议的动机。动机的例子：未来的车辆配备了先进的驾驶员辅助系统（ADAS），可以与多个传感器和ECU连接，以提供安全监测和控制。这种情况的一个重要要求是，被视为源的系统应该与所有ECU或网络目的地具有稳定的连接。同样重要的是，这种车载网络必须保证新兴控制服务的超低延迟，因为任何几秒钟的延迟都可能导致致命事故。因此，一个有效的协议设计是至关重要的VPLC，以支持未来的应用与关键任务和高带宽的需求。该项目的目的是提高网络的可靠性，并保证车辆电力线通信中车载应用的严格关键任务要求。我们将与汽车专家合作，构建项目，开发创新和智能的车载通信协议。这项建议寻求的解决办法有两个方面。一个是追求新的智能接入和拥塞控制解决方案的设计，充分探索的实践和理论分析，信道/业务模式和自学习技术的动态性质，这提供了该建议的理论方面。然后，第二步是从实用方面，其中所提出的电力线方法应能够与现有的最先进的解决方案共存和合作，其性能将通过实际的车载交通数据进行验证。显然，这两者是不可分割的，不仅因为车载网络可靠通信的最终目标只有在这两个部分的完成下才能实现，而且因为这两个部分之间的交互是有效系统设计的关键。

With the emerging automated tasks in vehicle domain, the development of in-vehicle communications is increasingly important and subjected to new applications. Although both wired and wireless communications have been largely used for supporting diverse applications, most of in-vehicle applications with mission-critical nature, such as brake and engine controls, still prefer dedicated wired networks for reliable and secure transmission. One of the key challenges for data wiring is to facilitate the interconnectivity of increasing devices, e.g., sensors and electronic control units (ECU), effectively creating an in-vehicle network with low response latency, improved reliability and less complexity. The space requirement, weight, and installation costs for these wires can become significant, especially in future vehicles, which are highly sophisticated electronic systems. Given that vehicle components, sensors and ECUs are already connected to power wires, we apply vehicle power lines, which have recently been utilized for in-vehicle communications at the physical layer, to in-vehicle networks in this proposal. Taking mass air flow sensor as an example, it has one power wire and two signal wires, it will be efficient to use power line communications to replace the current signal wires, so 66% of wiring can be reduced. The advancement of vehicular power line communications (VPLC) can provide a very low complexity and free platform for in-vehicle networks, which is ideal for the increasing demand of applications in particular with future vehicles. However, the emerging VPLC is constrained by lack of protocol support, which pose significant challenges to deploy it in practise and ensure mission-critical communications. The following example illustrates the motivation of this proposal.An example for the motivation: A future vehicle is equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) which can be connected with multiple sensors and ECUs to provide safety monitoring and control. An important demand of this scenario is that the systems, viewed as sources, should have stable connections with all ECUs, or network destinations. And it is also important that such in-vehicle networks must guarantee ultra-low latency for emerging control services since any seconds of delay may cause fatal accident. Therefore, an effective protocol design is crucial for VPLC to support future applications with mission-critical and high-bandwidth demands. The aim of the project is to improve the reliability of the network and guarantee stringent mission-critical requirements of in-vehicle applications in vehicular power line communications. We will partner with automotive specialists and construct the project to develop innovative and intelligent in-vehicle communication protocols. The solution this proposal is seeking is two fold. One is to pursue new design of intelligent access and congestion control solutions by fully exploring the practical and theoretical analysis, dynamic nature of channels/traffic patterns and self-learning techniques, which provides the theoretic aspect of the proposal. Then, the second step is from the practical aspect, where the proposed power line method shall be able to coexist and cooperate with existing state-of-the-art solutions, and its performance will be validated by practical in-vehicle traffic data. Obviously the two are inseparable not just because the ultimate goal of reliable communication for in-vehicle networks is only possible with the accomplishment of the both two parts, but also because the interaction between the two parts is the key for effective system design.