Flexray static segment scheduling

Abstract

The FlexRay protocol was introduced by an international consortium including several car manufacturers to cope with growing real-time requirements of advanced driver assistance functions and safety functions in the automotive domain. The FlexRay protocol offers a static and dynamic segment with a high data rate of 10 Mbit/s. While the event-triggered dynamic segment is used mainly for diagnosis, maintenance, and calibration data, the time-triggered static segment might be used for critical data with strict real-time requirements. In addition to standard linear bus and star topologies, the FlexRay bus allows hybrid topologies including a dual channel mode to increase the reliability. However, in contrast to the prevailing CAN bus [4] in the automotive domain, the configuration of the FlexRay bus is significantly more complex: It requires a large set of parameters and a predefined schedule. This chapter introduces a scheduling concept for the static segment of the FlexRay based on the transformation to a two-dimensional bin packing problem.