Performance Study of an In-Car Switched Ethernet Network without Prioritization

Abstract

This paper presents the current state of our research in real-time communication of an IP-based in-car network. The Internet Protocol (IP) will serve as convergence layer of different specific in-car network protocols and IEEE 802.3 Ethernet will be the basic technology to transport IP. In this work, we evaluate a legacy switched Ethernet network without any Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms. While there are arguments for not using QoS mechanisms, we give evidence that communication requirements and service constraints of a more and more streaming intensive in-car network cannot be met without. We argue for a setup with different traffic types: CAN and FlexRay like control messages, camera streaming, video and audio streaming, and bulk traffic. We will also argue for a simple double star topology as a valid assumption where the target architecture of the IP-based in-car network is not yet clear. Setup and simulation will serve as framework and motivation for future work: Analyzing IP-based real-time communication using QoS mechanisms - characterizing traffic classes after IEEE 802.1Q and IEEE 802.1 Audio Video Bridging (AVB).