The Impact of Network Topologies on the Performance of the In-Vehicle Network

Today's vehicles contain hundreds of circuits, sensors and around 80-120 Electronic Control Units(ECUs). The communication is needed among many circuits and functions of a vehicle. In earlier vehicle systems, this type of communication was handled via a dedicated wire through point-to-point connections. If all possible combinations of switches, sensors, ECUs and other electronic devices in fully featured vehicles are accumulated, the resulting number of connections and dedicated wiring is enormous. Hence networking of these components is necessary to reduce the complexity of electronics inside a vehicle. In-vehicle networking provides a more efficient method for today's complex in-vehicle communications. This paper focuses on the comparison of the performance of ring and star network topologies on the basis of bus load.