A Service-Oriented Real-Time Communication Scheme for AUTOSAR Adaptive Using OPC UA and Time-Sensitive Networking

Abstract

The transportation industry is facing major challenges that come along with innovative trends like autonomous driving. Due to the growing amount of network participants, smart sensors, and mixed-critical data, scalability and interoperability have become key factors of cost-efficient vehicle engineering. One solution to overcome these challenges is the AUTOSAR Adaptive software platform. Its service-oriented communication methodology allows a standardized data exchange that is not bound to a specific middleware protocol. OPC UA is a communication standard that is well-established in modern industrial automation. In addition to its Client–Server communication pattern, the newly released Publish–Subscribe (PubSub) architecture promotes scalability. PubSub is designed to work in conjunction with Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), a collection of standards that add real-time aspects to standard Ethernet networks. TSN allows services with different requirements to share a single physical network. In this paper, we specify an integration approach of AUTOSAR Adaptive, OPC UA, and TSN. It combines the benefits of these three technologies to provide deterministic high-speed communication. Our main contribution is the architecture for the binding between Adaptive Platform and OPC UA. With a prototypical implementation, we prove that a combination of OPC UA Client–Server and PubSub qualifies as a middleware solution for service-oriented communication in AUTOSAR.

Keywords

• AUTOSAR adaptive
• OPC UA
• time-sensitive networking
• vehicle communication