TrueFlex: A flexible and efficient evaluation platform for networked automotive systems

Automotive embedded systems are widely used in modern vehicles such as cars, aircrafts and so on. However, modeling and evaluation of these systems is very challenging because time-to-market is very short and vehicles use very different platforms with various sensors, operating systems and embedded software modules. In this paper, we propose a TrueTime-based networked automotive platform (TrueFlex) which enables modeling and simulation of processing units, operating system kernels, communication bus and sensors/actuators in realtime or non-realtime automotive systems. This platform is easily upgradeable and provides different abstraction levels for modeling of automotive embedded systems with very informative reports and graphs. This platform is implemented and evaluated in this paper to show its very useful capabilities for automotive electronic designers.