Complex Device Driver Development for AUTOSAR Compliant Powertrain ECU

About the Customer

Our customer is an Electric Vehicle OEM, based out of India. They have been pioneering the Electric Vehicle revolution in India with their wide range of products in passenger and utility vehicle segment.
 

Business Challenge

The customer had designed an AUTOSAR 4.0 compliant Powertrain ECU (Electronic Control Unit). Following software modules had been designed, as part of the AUTOSAR layered architecture:

• An application layer
• RTE (Run Time Environment), and OS,
• Base Software Module (BSW) and MCAL.

However, at a later stage need was felt for the addition of a few new hardware components in the powertrain ECU like speed sensors, and Real Time Clock (RTC), I/O expander, H-Bridge etc.

These newly integrated components were required to communicate with the microcontroller. However, these hardware components had to be kept separate from the AUTOSAR software architecture due to challenges such as

• Speed constraints with I2C channel.
• No specification provided by AUTOSAR to interface components like RTC etc.

Hence there was a need to develop Complex Device Divers (CDD) for the Powertrain ECU

In a nutshell, our customer’s EV (Electric Vehicle) team was confronted with the following challenges

• Design and development of the Complex Device Drivers (CDD) for the specific devices.
• Configuration of the interface between CDDs and the AUTOSAR application layer through SPI and I2C channels.
• Development of the APIs to enable transfer of data between the application layer and CDD.

Embitel’s Solution

Our Automotive Team’s job was clearly cut out, as the customer had already built the AUTOSAR layer with base software module, application layer and MCAL.

We started by developing the Complex Device Drivers for each of the devices required by the customers and proceeded to the APIs development.

Here is the complete solution that we successfully delivered for the Electric Vehicle OEM:

• Complex Device Drivers (CDDs) for the required hardware components
• I2C and SPI channel configuration for application layer and CDD communication.
• Functional specification (APIs): Configuration of list of signals required by the application to control the non-AUTOSAR hardware devices.
• Documentation of the APIs and the parameters for data exchange between two layers.

As per our established software delivery process, we provided the design documents (software architecture) as well. This would help our customer to understand the architecture and enhance the software in future.
 

Features of Complex Device Driver Solution from Embitel

• Solution developed based on AUTOSAR 4.0 Specification
• Programmers guide for the configuration of the driver
• AUTOSAR ARXML for Configuration
• Test Specification, Verification and Test Reports Generation
• Configurability in multiple variant of the same hardware

Tools and Technologies

• TI microcontroller platform
• Code composer IDE
• Vector DaVinci Configurator tool
• Vector CANoe- Simulation tool
• XDS 100v2 Debugger