Verification of Third Party Components to The Road Telematics Communicator

Abstract: The Road Telematics Communicator (RTC) as it is called in Scania. It is the device responsible to keep the vehicle connected and send the vehicle data to the off-board system. It uses data from different sources such as GNSS signals, CAN signal, and wireless Telecom signals. Connected vehicles provide real-time information on positioning, fuel consumption, and vehicle diagnostics. There are acceptance and regression test suites that verify the functionality of RTC. Third-party components such as the GNSS module are not a part of the tests due to technical limitations. Hence RTC lacks automated tests for important features. Due to the lack of complete verification in automated test suites, time-consuming tests must be performed on the road. And trouble reports from the field are difficult to analyze. This thesis provides testing the location accuracy of the GNSS module in vehicles used for telematics applications in the automotive industry, by using a GPS vector signal generator in a controlled lab environment. GNSS consists of GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, BEIDOU. We are using GPS in this research. The GPS receiver is put under test in a controlled lab environment for testing the Time to First Fix, Location accuracy of GPS receiver, and analyzing the performance with the given inputs. Test cases were created similar to field tests on the signal generator. At this stage, an experiment is performed on the GPS receiver which is connected to the signal generator via RF connector and to a computer via LAN. An input data is sent to the signal generator in the form of SCPI commands. The signal generator processes these commands and generates a signal accordingly. This generated signal is fed to the receiver. With the help of a signal generator, we can generate fields like inputs and verify the behavior of the GPS module. By verifying the behavior of the module, we can develop test cases that show the functionality of the receiver.