An approach for redundancy in FlexRay networks using FPGA partial reconfiguration

Safety-critical in-vehicle electronic control units (ECUs) demand high levels of determinism and isolation, since they directly influence vehicle behaviour and passenger safety. As modern vehicles incorporate more complex computational systems, ensuring the safety of critical systems becomes paramount. One-to-one redundant units have been previously proposed as measures for evolving critical functions like x-by-wire. However, these may not be viable solutions for power-constrained systems like next generation electric vehicles. Reconfigurable architectures offer alternative approaches to implementing reliable safety critical systems using more efficient hardware. In this paper, we present an approach for implementing redundancy in safety-critical in-car systems, that uses FPGA partial reconfiguration and a customised bus controller to offer fast recovery from faults. Results show that such an integrated design is better than alternatives that use discrete bus interface modules.