Design of an Integrated Testing Platform for Automotive Electronic
Control Units
Pengzhan CHEN
College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, East China Jiaotong University, Nanchang, China
cyxcpz@163.com
Keywords: testing platform; automotive ECU; automation test
Abstract. Automotive electronic control units (ECU) play an increasingly important role in modern
cars. With the rapid development of ECU market, more and more ECU for vehicle appears, the ECU
performance test is very important because automotive ECU closely related to the reliability and the
safety of the vehicle. Starting from analyzing the characteristics of automotive electronic control unit,
this article describes a generic automotive ECU testing platform, with the testing platform
characteristics discussed. The proposed ECU testing platform can comply hardware testing, function
testing, and communication testing, it can also reduce the test errors, and support assembly line test of
ECU, which can greatly reduces the complexity of ECU functional test and test work.
Introduction
Automotive electronic control units (ECU) are important for ensuring the smooth operation of
electronic systems in vehicles, and there are many types of ECU in automobiles today [1]. A typical
modern car will include 40-70 ECUs [2], each controlling a specific function of the vehicle, the
number and complexity of ECU in the car is also growing with the continuous improvement of
automobile electronic products and security needs.
The performance of Automotive ECU results the vehicle’s reliability. In 2010, over 20.3 million
vehicles were recalled, and ECU related to automotive controls account for an increasingly large
percentage of the overall vehicles recalled [3]. There is a need for testing platform to evaluate ECU in
a realistic and open setting. With the testing platform, we can test individual ECUs in the integration
phase under laboratory conditions just as easily as when the system is integrated into the vehicle.
In this paper, the ECU testing platform design process was given after analyzing the ECU testing
requirements. The generic testing of the ECU hardware design, software architecture, and network
communication protocols can be achieved based on the proposed testing platform.
ECU testing requirements analysis
An ECU is relatively complex electronic equipment, an embedded system combining analog and
digital electronics with computing power and communication interfaces. ECU contains the following
functional modules: Power - digital and analog (analog sensor power supply); MPU - microcontroller
and memory (usually flash memory and RAM); Communications link - (CAN bus, LIN bus,
FlexRay); Discrete input - on / off input; Frequency input - encoder signal (the crankshaft or vehicle
speed); Analog input - the feedback signal from the sensor; switching output - On / off output; PWM
output - variable frequency and duty cycle (such as kicker or igniter); Frequency output - constant
duty cycle (such as a stepper motor - idle speed control). The structure of ECU was showed as figure
1.
More than 70 electronic control units (ECU’s) serve for safety and comfort functions in a luxury
car, as the number of body control modules in new vehicles continues to grow, module
interconnectivity has become increasingly important [4], communicating over different ECU become
popular, and develop into different bus systems, such as CAN, LIN, MOST, Bluetooth. In bus system,
ECU are connected to the different busses which in turn are connected through a central gateway to
enable the communication of all system, and bus system result in a significant development and test
challenge.
Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 333-335 (2013) pp 1471-1474
© (2013) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland
doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.333-335.1471
All rights reserved. No part of contents of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of TTP,
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