Doing More with Less Wiring: Mission-Critical and Intelligent Communication Protocols for Future Vehicles Using Power Lines

With the emerging automated tasks in vehicle domain, the development of in-vehicle communications is increasingly important and subjected to new applications. Although both wired and wireless communications have been largely used for supporting diverse applications, most of in-vehicle applications with mission-critical nature, such as brake and engine controls, still prefer dedicated wired networks for reliable and secure transmission.
One of the key challenges for data wiring is to facilitate the interconnectivity of increasing devices, e.g., sensors and electronic control units (ECU), effectively creating an in-vehicle network with low response latency, improved reliability and less complexity. The space requirement, weight, and installation costs for these wires can become significant, especially in future vehicles, which are highly sophisticated electronic systems.

Given that vehicle components, sensors and ECUs are already connected to power wires, we apply vehicle power lines, which have recently been utilized for in-vehicle communications at the physical layer, to in-vehicle networks in this proposal. Taking mass air flow sensor as an example, it has one power wire and two signal wires, it will be efficient to use power line communications to replace the current signal wires, so 66% of wiring can be reduced. The advancement of vehicular power line communications (VPLC) can provide a very low complexity and free platform for in-vehicle networks, which is ideal for the increasing demand of applications in particular with future vehicles. However, the emerging VPLC is constrained by lack of protocol support, which pose significant challenges to deploy it in practise and ensure mission-critical communications. The following example illustrates the motivation of this proposal.

An example for the motivation: A future vehicle is equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) which can be connected with multiple sensors and ECUs to provide safety monitoring and control. An important demand of this scenario is that the systems, viewed as sources, should have stable connections with all ECUs, or network destinations. And it is also important that such in-vehicle networks must guarantee ultra-low latency for emerging control services since any seconds of delay may cause fatal accident. Therefore, an effective protocol design is crucial for VPLC to support future applications with mission-critical and high-bandwidth demands.

The aim of the project is to improve the reliability of the network and guarantee stringent mission-critical requirements of in-vehicle applications in vehicular power line communications. We will partner with automotive specialists and construct the project to develop innovative and intelligent in-vehicle communication protocols. The solution this proposal is seeking is two fold. One is to pursue new design of intelligent access and congestion control solutions by fully exploring the practical and theoretical analysis, dynamic nature of channels/traffic patterns and self-learning techniques, which provides the theoretic aspect of the proposal. Then, the second step is from the practical aspect, where the proposed power line method shall be able to coexist and cooperate with existing state-of-the-art solutions, and its performance will be validated by practical in-vehicle traffic data. Obviously the two are inseparable not just because the ultimate goal of reliable communication for in-vehicle networks is only possible with the accomplishment of the both two parts, but also because the interaction between the two parts is the key for effective system design.

The proposed work has clear impacts on the emerging communications and automotive technology in both academia and industry. It also fits within EPSRC's Information and communication technologies (ICT) schemes in manufacturing the future intelligent vehicles and accelerating digital economy in transport, and strategic plan to develop a low carbon future.

Academia

In the short term, communications research community working on communication systems and protocols for both vehicles and infrastructure will benefit from the alternative power line communication technology to increase networks reliability and guarantee stringent transmission delay requirements of mission-critical applications. Automotive engineering community will also benefit from such a low cost and efficient technology by providing a new lightweight and low complexity system design which is reliable and suitable for deployment in the future vehicles.

Industry impact

The interest of industry frequently align with academia. So in the long term, the in-vehicle power line communications proposed will be of direct relevance to automotive and industrial automation engineers in the communication system sector. The scientific knowledge gained from the proposed study of new communication technology, will help car manufactures build more robust and reliable in-vehicle systems, which underpins the UK leading automotive industry in developing connected and autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, given the fact that the weight of a wire harness makes up the third heaviest and costliest component in a car, it shows a huge environmental benefit and market potential for using less materials and reducing car manufacture cost. Moreover, the proposed solution can further help car manufactures to explore emerging new markets, such as vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) where a more flexible connectivity between grid networks and cars can be built, etc.

Specifically, the proposed solution and its results will be of interest to Toyota and NXP, and their network research division in providing complementary information to inform automotive engineers, and thus will benefit their global car manufacturing.

Economy and society impact

The UK automotive industry is of strategic importance to the UK. Since 2016, the government has announced £100 million Intelligent Mobility Fund to develop the next generation transport, including connected and autonomous vehicles. This project will pave the way for the development and deployment of connected autonomous vehicles in the UK and help the industry address global challenges relating to safety, efficiency and convenience, which signals a major change in the way vehicles will be powered in the future and reaffirms the government's commitment to provide new opportunities for the motor industry to help grow the UK economy and ultimately lead to global export. Moreover, the lighter weight of cars is an important factor for fuel economy and safety performance. A key to the success of the current targets is that they are based in large part on close joint working between regulators and industry. We will contribute our part in ensuring the advanced communication technology is able to deliver its obligations cost-effectively. In this way, in the longer-term, consumers or general public will benefit from connectivity technology as an enabler for safer, efficient and more enjoyable journeys.

Capacity-building

The PI will build capacities in developing independent research skills, efficient communication with project partners, and effective project management skills from both training courses offered by the Doctoral Training Centres at Sussex and practice. The PDRA, who will work closely with PI, will benefit from obtaining the cutting-edge knowledge, transferable skills that can be applied in communications/computer/automotive areas, and opportunities to interact with different researchers.