Use Case: Integrating Production-Ready Basic software into V-ECUs

The Advantages

• Separating software-software integration from software-hardware integration increases the maturity level of production code even before real hardware is available
• Validating ECU network communication as early as SIL testing, thanks to more realistic ECU network simulation including adaptive V-ECUs
• Testing the compatibility of your own production code instead of a third party’s mock-up code or preliminary implementation results in more realistic tests 

The Challenge

You want to use virtual validation for testing application software, but the application software includes functionalities that are highly dependent on the basic software. Or you want to perform tests that rely on the basic software, e.g., diagnostic tests or tests that use VEOS bus simulation. You might also want to focus testing on the integrated application and basic software code, which benefits not only the maturity of the application software, but also lets you detect possible errors in BSW configurations. 

The Idea

Benefit from AUTOSAR’s modularity and integrate an ECU’s production BSW components into a V-ECU via an MCAL interface. Create a V-ECU that contains the application software and parts of the basic software, supplemented by dSPACE basic software like the AUTOSAR RTE and the operating system (OS). Or create a V-ECU from the code of a complete ECU. For this, you only have to replace the hardware-dependent parts of the software (MCAL Layer) with appropriate modules for the VEOS simulation platform.

An Example

In a simulation of an ECU network, communication between adaptive and classic V-ECUs requires communication by means of bus simulation. To enable bus communication with V-ECUs following the industry standard of the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform, a classic V-ECU containing a complete Ethernet stack is required.

For early ECU integration testing, one important aspect is to validate the functionalities of the bus interfaces. You can save time in subsequent HIL testing by testing an ECU’s bus interfaces already on the PC with V-ECUs. This way, you can achieve better software quality before starting HIL testing. Once you start using a major part of the ECU code in a V-ECU it is self-evident that transition from SIL to HIL tests becomes a lot easier. You can then even run the exact same tests in VEOS and on a HIL simulator.