Automotive embedded sysstems are the one where electronics take control over the mechanical systems. The presence of automotive embedded system in a vehicle varios from simple mirrror and wiper control to complex air bag controller and antilock brake sysrems (ABS).

ELECTEONIC CONTROL UNIT (ECUs)

Automotive embedded systems are normally built around microcontroller or DSPs or hybrid of two and are generally known as electronic control units.

The number of embedded controller 8n an ordinary vehicle varies varies from 20 to 40 where as a luxury vehicle like mercedes conteoller. The first embedded system used in automotive application was the microprocessor based fuel injection system introduced by valkswagen 1600 in 1968

The varios types of electronic control units used in the automotive embedded system ca be classified into 

1.High speed electronic control unit

2.low speed electronic control units 

HIGH SPEED ELECTRONIC CONTROL UNIT

High speed electrnic control unit are deployed in critical control units requiring fast response. They include fuel injection systems, antilock brake system , engine control, Electronic throttle, steering controls, transmission control unit and central control unit

LOW SPEED ELECTRONIC CONTEOL UNITS

Low speed electronic control units are deployed in applications where response time is not so critical. They generally qre built around low cost microprocessors/controllers anfd digital signal processor.

AUTOMOTIVE COMMUNICATION BUSSES

Automotive appliations make use of serial busses for communication, which greatly reduces the amount of wiring required inside a vehicle. The different types of srial interfaces buses deployed in automotive appli ations such as follows ,

CONTROLLER AREA NETWORK

The CAN bus was originally proposed by robert bosch, pioneer in the automotive embedded solution providers. It support medium speed and high speed data transfers

CAN is an event driven protocol interface with support for error handling in data tranmission. It is generally employed in safety wystwm like airbag conteol, powrr train systems like engine control and Anti lock brake system and navigatqion systems like GPS.

LOCAL INTERCONNECT NETWORK

LIN bus is a single master multiple slave comunication interfaces. LIN is a low speed, single wire communication interface with support for data eates up to 20 kbps and is used for sensor/actuators interfacing .

LIN bus follow the master communication triggering technique to eliminate the possible bus problem that can occur by the simultaneous talking of different slave nodes connected ta a single interface bus.

Media oriented system transport bus

Key player of the automotive embedded market

     Silicon providers

      Analog device

      Xilinx

     Atmel

     Maxim/dails

      NXP semiconductor 

    Renesas 

     Texas instruments

     Fujitsu

     Infineon