User-Level Network Protocol Stacks for Automotive Infotainment Systems

The mechanical control interfaces in automobiles are replaced rapidly by electrical interfaces enabling the x-by-wire technology. Besides the legacy automotive control parts, the infotainment systems recently come into the spotlight and become an important part of automobiles. Since the traditional automobile networks are not suitable to support these infotainment applications, new automobile network called Media Oriented System Transport (MOST) has been introduced. The MOST standard defines the network protocol stacks called Network Service. Though the industry just starts releasing new automobiles equipped with MOST-based infotainment systems, they either have yet to follow the specification of Network Service or highly dependent on the commercial implementation. In this paper, we aim to suggest a design of the Network Service protocol stacks called u-OMNiPro (user-level Open MOST Network Service Protocol Stacks), which can provide portability across different operating systems, better responsiveness, and easy interfaces to implement applications. The performance measurement results show that u-OMNiPro can run on Linux and Windows operating systems with low CPU resource requirements and high communication responsiveness.