In-Car Communication based on Power Line Networks

The number of electronic control units in today’s cars is permanently increasing. As the demand for information exchange between these units is growing, the complexity of the incar communication infrastructure also increases. In the past more and more bus-segments have been added to cope with the growing demands. In order to reduce the complexity and the costs for the future in-car communication infrastructure, the approach of using power line communication for the in-car communication has been analyzed. By using power line communication, the cabling can be reduced to the minimum. In this paper the challenges of today’s and the requirements for future in-car systems are summarized. The HomePlug Green PHY standard, which has been designed for Smart Grid applications, is analyzed according to its applicability to the in-car communication. Additionally a proposal and its evaluation for the reduction of the protocol overhead is presented.