Study of a vehicular drive-by-wire system based on FlexRay protocol

In recent years, in order to meet the requirements of comfortable and safe upgrades, the modern vehicles include the more electronic controller, sensors and drivers and lead to the rapid increase of vehicular electronic control units. Therefore, the automotive communication network is greatly increased the engineering and technical complexity for data transmission. FlexRay protocol is proposed to provide the high-speed communication system with high flexibility and reliability between electronic control units for automotive applications. In this paper, the networking platform is proposed and developed to implement a vehicular Drive-by-Wire system, which uses FlexRay Protocol as the backbone of data communication. This Drive-by-Wire system is designed and integrated by Steer-by-Wire and Throttle-by-Wire functions. The Steer-by-Wire system is used to replace the mechanical structure between the steering wheel and the wheels into electronic equipment to control the wheel steering. Then, the Throttle-by-Wire system is proposed to substitute the traditional pull throttle cable to control the engine valve opening and closing for electronic signals to control the throttle. Furthermore, this Drive-by-Wire system is integrated and networked by four ECU nodes to achieve the Steer-by-Wire, and Throttle-by-Wire control. In conclusion, the Drive-by-Wire system platform is constructed by integrating the Steer-by-Wire and Throttle-by-Wire functions based on FlexRay communication to illustrate and evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed network architecture for vehicular applications in this paper.