Failure Detection in FlexRay Networks through Asymmetry Assessment

FlexRay is an important communication network for automotive systems and the de-facto standard for in-vehicle safety and time-critical applications. High reliability and self-diagnosis are indispensable. Since bus networks can be affected during their whole lifetime by permanent failures on the transmission wires, the interest on failure detection is increasing. In this paper the static and dynamic performances of common automotive failure detection methods are analyzed for a FlexRay controller. A new mechanism for the peculiar symmetrical structure of FlexRay is proposed and compared with the more known ones. It permits an improvement of the static and dynamic performances. The analysis is based on analytical computations and numerical Spectre-simulations.