Evaluating the communication impact on quality of service in steer-by-wire systems

X-by-Wire is a generic term referring to the replacement of mechanical or hydraulic systems, such as braking or steering, by electronic ones. The control of x-by-wire systems depends on communication network (like CAN, TTCAN or FlexRay), it must meet not only the control performance, but also the real-time requirements. This paper presents a system approach for evaluating the communication impact on steer-by-wire systemspsila control performance taking into account the message period, delay variation and network faults that probably introduced by network transmission. Steer-by-wire systempsilas simulation model are established in Matlab/Simulink environment, which mainly includes hand wheel node, road wheel node and network module. Several simulations have been carried out to estimate the impact of communication on the quality of service (Qos, for example, side slip angle waveforms) of steer-by-wire system and some critic limits are gained. The results of our work can be taken as a reference to design and improve the reliability of communication protocol in steer-by-wire systems to meet the control and real-time requirement.