Network Calculus for the Validation of Automotive Ethernet In-vehicle Network Configurations

Automotive functions require validation of the underlying network in advance. Especially driver assistance functions may require hard time bounds concerning their communication infrastructure. In several works analytical models have been introduced, enabling the calculation of worst case delays for realtime applications using Ethernet as communication technology. On the other hand considerable effort has been spend to evaluate Ethernet for the use in automotive in-vehicle networks using simulation tools and prototypes. Showing that Ethernet can be used in general for the automotive use, they did not make an assertion about what happens if the worst case occurs. In this work we show by means of an analytic model the worst case analysis of a sample automotive Ethernet network configuration. We show that this configuration satisfies a current set of automotive functions requirements -- even for the worst case.