E/E Architecture Solutions for SDVs: From System Design to Configuration Selection

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the main motivations that influence the transition to a new generation of Electrical and Electronic (E/E) architectures based on the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) paradigm. Today, the E/E architecture can be considered as the nervous system of the vehicle; in fact, the E/E architecture includes both ECUs and the vehicle network that, organized together, realize the vehicle functions. So the E/E architecture represents the element that enables vehicle innovation, from basic control tasks to advanced capabilities such as autonomous driving and over-the-air (OTA) software updates. This work also aims to propose potential solutions for future E/E architectures expected to evolve from traditional distributed systems toward zonal SDV architectures. To contextualize this transition, an overview of the SDV concept is provided, emphasizing the technological and industrial factors that motivate this shift and the main challenges related, in particular, to the commercial vehicle segment. Commercial vehicles are characterized by many different configurations, even within the same range, due to differences in powertrain, body type, and customer-specific options. These differences highlight the need for flexible and scalable E/E architectures capable of adapting efficiently to a wide spectrum of configurations without requiring complete redesigns. The thesis initially examines current distributed E/E architectures and presents a case study on the centralization of one vehicular domain to evaluate the advantages and challenges of centralization. Subsequently, the study investigates the hardware and network infrastructures required to enable zonal architectures based on service-oriented principles. As computational power shifts from individual ECUs to zonal control units (ZCUs) and High-Performance Computers ( HPCs ), higher hardware performance is required at the zonal level. From a networking perspective, traditional communication protocols used in the automotive field, such as CAN, LIN, LVDS/GMSL, will be analyzed, with a particular focus on Ethernet (ETH), which will probably have increased importance in the realization of the future backbone network. Building on these analyses, different architectural configurations are proposed, ranging from fully centralized systems, where zones act primarily as input/output aggregators for all vehicular functions, to zonal systems in which ZCUs perform localized processing tasks. Finally, some elements that effectively influence the architectural choice will be defined, and by varying these elements, further considerations will be made to observe how scalability across different ranges, modularity between variants of the same range, and wiring complexity change. This evaluation is applied to three real cases: Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV), Heavy Commercial Vehicle (HCV), and Bus, each introducing specific constraints related to the architecture. The conclusive section synthesizes the findings and reflects on how the proposed architectural strategies can guide the evolution of E/E systems in commercial vehicles toward the SDV paradigm, balancing performance, cost, maintainability, and scalability in future mobility solutions.