CAN Network Architecture Definition for Tractor ECU design, for an Indian OEM

 
Customer:

Our customer is one of the largest Indian automotive OEM, who caters to several global markets as well. The project is a breakthrough in itself as it marks the beginning of introduction of electronics in agricultural vehicles in India, especially the tractors.

Business Challenge:

• Unlike passenger vehicles, the agriculture and forestry vehicles in India are not equipped with electronic control units (ECUs) and a vehicle network.
• In order to make these vehicles more efficient, feature-rich and easy-to-diagnose, electronic components and network had to be implemented.
• Tractors are a kind of utility vehicle that acts as a central system for several functions. When integration of electronic components like ECUs is planned, different sub-systems need to be connected to each other and any kind of incompatibility has to be identified and rectified.
• In this project, the challenge was to introduce the electronic components in the tractors and for that, electronic network topology and guidelines of the tractors had to be defined.
• Our customer was looking out for Automotive Domain experts who could define the CAN-based network topology for tractors. Based on the topology, the actual electronic network had to be designed.
• In addition to the topology definition, the customer also required guidelines for components such as ECUs, communication protocol, bootloader, software and more. These guidelines would help the network design engineers to implement the network architecture without any compatibility issue.
• As we had worked in an indirect partnership with the concerned OEM before, they were quite confident in our capability of handling the complexity of the project.

 

Embitel’s Solution:

For the first phase of the vehicle network design, our automotive engineers with in-depth domain knowledge, worked on the network topology and guidelines design.

The solution we provided to the customer consisted of:

• Definition of network topology: With more ECUs coming into the picture, the in-vehicle network gets quite complex. A well-defined network topology clearly depicting the nodes and the connection is indispensable. We defined all the network topologies based on the requirements of an agricultural vehicle.
• Guidelines for ECUs (Parameters etc.): All the ECU parameters were clearly defined and the guidelines for their interconnection were documented.
• Guidelines for communication protocols: Guidelines for the integration of communication protocols such as CAN, LIN, and ISOBUS etc. have been documented here.
• Guidelines for diagnostics protocols: These guidelines are about all the diagnostics protocols (UDS, J1939, OBD etc.) that will be integrated into the vehicle. We have defined how these protocols will be integrated to the tractor ECU.
• Guidelines for the flash bootloader software: Bootloader software is necessary for ECU reprogramming and all the guidelines related to it are defined.
• Guidelines for ISOBUS network: ISOBUS is a communication protocol for agricultural and forestry vehicles and the guidelines for it need to be mentioned separately.
• Guidelines for Gateway: The rate of data transfer in different subsystems are different and therefore, a gateway is required to optimize it. The guidelines for this gateway is mentioned here.