A survey of in-vehicle communications: Requirements, solutions and opportunities in IoT

As the automobile industry evolves, a number of in-vehicle communication protocols are developed for different in-vehicle applications. With the emerging new applications towards Internet of Things (IoT), a more integral solution is needed to enable the pervasiveness of intra- and inter-vehicle communications. In this survey, we first introduce different classifications of automobile applications with focus on their bandwidth and latency. Then we survey different in-vehicle communication bus protocols including both legacy protocols and emerging Ethernet. In addition, we highlight our contribution in the field to employ power line as the in-vehicle communication medium. We believe power line communication will play an important part in future automobile which can potentially reduce the amount of wiring, simplify design and reduce cost. Based on these technologies, we also introduce some promising applications in future automobile enabled by the development of in-vehicle network. Finally, We will share our view on how the in-vehicle network can be merged into the future IoT.