A self-propagating wakeup mechanism for point-to-point networks with partial network support

As a result of the increased demand for bandwidth, current automotive networks are getting more heterogeneous. New technologies like Ethernet as a packet-switched point-to-point network are introduced. Nevertheless, the requirements on stand-by power consumption and short activation times are still the same as for existing field buses. Ethernet does not provide wakeup mechanisms that are sufficient for automotive systems. As a remedy, this paper introduces a novel physical-layer mechanism called Low Frequency Wakeup that is largely independent of the communication technology and topology used. It provides parallel and remote wakeup for all nodes even in a point-to-point network as well as full support of partial networking. The overall wakeup detection time is smaller than 10ms and every node can actively feed a wakeup signal asynchronously to all other nodes. In terms of latency, it is shown that Low Frequency Wakeup reaches a reduction of more than 30 % for a three-hop network and more than 50 % for a five-hop network in comparison to the current state-of-the-art technology for automotive point-to-point networks.