A SystemC simulator for the dynamic segment of the FlexRay protocol

Abstract: FlexRay, developed by a consortium of over hundred automotive companies, is a real-time in-vehicle communication protocol for automotive networks. It is being used as a higher-performance, time-triggered, and deterministic serial bus in automobiles for many safety-critical and x-by-wire systems. In x-by-wire systems the hydraulic parts of systems such as steering and braking are replaced with electronics. As x-by-wire systems are safety-critical, they must be fault-tolerant, deterministic, and should have synchronized time base (global time). FlexRay fulfils all these requirements as it is a deterministic and fault-tolerant serial bus system with data rates of 10 Mbps for extremely safety- and time-critical applications. As, FlexRay has become the de-facto standard for high speed safety-critical communications in automotive domain, and timing analysis of FlexRay still continues to generate significant research interest. The FlexRay allows both time-triggered and event-triggered messages. The static (ST) segment allows time-triggered transmission, while dynamic (DYN) segment allows event-triggered transmission. As the DYN segment transmits messages based on their priorities; so the delay suffered by a message depends on the interferences by its higher priority messages. Computing interferences of the higher priority messages is a challenging problem for the DYN segment of FlexRay [32]. So, in order to compute interferences of the higher priority messages one way is to use simulation technique. The SystemC simulator proposed in this thesis is used to model and simulate the behaviour of the DYN segment of the FlexRay protocol. This modelling and simulation is done on system level using the system description language SystemC. The simulator estimates the delay suffered by a message instances because of the interferences of higher priority messages. This estimation of delay is done by taking no-jitter/jitter into consideration. Finally, in both the cases the delay suffered by each and every message instance is plotted.