Frame Packing for Minimizing the Bandwidth Consumption of the FlexRay Static Segment

The FlexRay protocol has emerged as the de facto standard for automotive communication systems, and it offers the advantages of both the event-triggered and time-triggered paradigms. To minimize bandwidth consumption (BC) in the static segment of the FlexRay communication cycle, we propose a frame-packing algorithm called BC minimizing with various periodic signals (BCMVPS), which is formulated as generalized integer linear programming that allows the packing of signals with different periods into a message frame. We also present the lower and upper bounds of the size of a static slot, as well as present a heuristic called BC best fit decreasing for linear frame selection for reducing the computing time of the BCMVPS algorithm. We compare the performance of the proposed algorithms with existing algorithms using the Society of Automotive Engineers benchmark data and GNU linear programming kit. The experimental results show that the BC of the proposed algorithms is less than that of the existing frame-packing algorithms.