Design and implementation of a software abstraction layer to extend the functionality of an automotive SoC with advanced I/O capabilities of a real time microcontroller

The automotive industry is continuously growing and the need for more safety and comfort has led to the creation of smarter cars. The possibility to retrieve any infor- mation from the internet, or other easy access points, has simplified the fault diagnostic procedure. The whole vehicle intelligence is handled by Electronic Control Units (ECU) that are constantly communicating between each other. Different ECUs interact through a common bus involving different devices. However, sometimes the single ECU structure could be very complex, forcing the use of different microcontrollers on the same unit. Thus the communication must be handled also among the cores on the device. The production of the ECUs is handled by manufacturers like Bosch, Denso, Conti- nental and many others. The main difference lies on the final product each company is able to provide. The ECU can be a simple car controller for the most common systems like the ABS, the light management and so on, but it can be a very complex device handling also internet connection, software updating, human interfaces and many other features. The subject of this thesis concerns the optimization of the communication layer between two microcontrollers on the same ECU and the porting of a new protocol compatible with the higher hierarchy equipments. The availability of devices using the same message encoding allows code reuse, hence faster development of the unit. The focus of this document is to describe the system on which an ECU is based on, the architecture of the target unit and, in details, its communication layer and the testing operations, plus the possible problems and the cause of them.