SOFTWARE UPDATES ON THEEFFICIENT USE OF CONNECTED CARS

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The components of a vehicle are well known: body, tyres, engine, transmission and clearly, also software. For a

long time, it has been an integral part of electronic control units, but the recent exponential increase of software

components in vehicles put traditional concepts to the test. Therefore, vehicle manufacturers and OEMs need to

find a way to manage software updates more efficiently. Suggestions are coming from Red Bend.

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MOTIVATION

The numbers are impressive: In a pre-mium class automobile there are close to 100 million lines of software codes, compared to the Boeing 787 with about 6.5 million lines. In addition the cost of software and electronics can reach 35 % to 40 % of the cost of a car. Present day automobiles typically contain more than 60 ECUs such as the audio system, brake system, doors, lighting, engine, transmission, batteries, and more. The embedded software package size is now tens of megabytes for engine and trans-mission controllers, while audio/info-tainment systems are usually the largest and most complicated software units, often exceeding 1,000 MB. In an article that was written in 2011, IBM claims that approximately 50 % of the car war-ranty costs are now related to electron-ics and their embedded software.

Today’s automobile contains many complex electronic systems; each may incorporate a large number of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) performing a sin-gle function and communicating via a common bus/network. Like most other systems, the systems of cars are sup-plied with updates to fix bugs and pro-vide new features.

But the methods previously used for the management of software are becom-ing inadequate in the face of the software load: vehicle development cycles do not meet the fast-paced changes in the soft-ware market, repairs for small software failures take too much time and the cus-

tomers are used to the advantages of the ever-evolving operating systems they know from smart phones or PCs. They do not want to wait until they purchase the next car to take advantage of new fea-tures. Manufacturers who develop con-venient solutions for such developments have clear advantages regarding customer satisfaction and loyalty.

HOW UPDATES IN VEHICLES ARE

PERFORMED TODAY

There are many control modules in a vehicle, most of which are interconnected over some form of vehicle network inter-face (CAN, MOST, LIN, FlexRay). How-ever, only a select few will have access to external cellular or Wi-Fi networks, typi-cally the infotainment head unit or Telem-atics module. It is possible to use an externally connected module as a gateway for updates, where firmware updates for other modules are received by this gate-way module and then transferred to the appropriate module over a vehicle net-work. In any case, each of the vehicle control modules will potentially be sub-ject to updates.

There are several use cases today for updating automobile software: because of recalls (mandatory or voluntary) or cus-tomer complaints, during scheduled main-tenance or when delivering new features and applications.

The recall case is the most common, and it begins with a vehicle manufacturer finding a problem with the vehicle func-

AUTHOR

RUDOLF VON STOKAR

is Managing Director at Red Bend in Munich (Germany).

➊ The path of over-the-air updates: the software owner (the manufacturer or OEM) ships a new version of his software to a software management centre from there, the files are transmitted to the vehicles via a mobile net-work, where they are unpacked and installed

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tionality. The affected functionality can be fixed by changing software in one of the vehicle’s ECUs. The appropriate ECU sup-plier is then requested to provide a new release. The supplier ships the software release to the Original Equipment Manu-facturer (OEM), which tests it for quality assurance (QA). After that, the OEM noti-fies the dealers and owners of the recall via mail. The OEM sends the new soft-ware version to the dealers on a CD by mail as well. The dealer updates the reprogramming (serial communication) tools with the content from the CD. The vehicle owner drops off the vehicle at the dealer shop and the technician starts con-necting a serial communication tool to the in-vehicle bus to access the targeted ECU. After performing the update and checking the targeted ECU for the new software version to make sure proper re-flashing happened, the customer picks up the updated vehicle und the dealer charges the OEM for the recall labour.

The update duration changes signifi-cantly depending on the module size and the speed of the serial protocol; however due to a lot of overhead, dealers are charging one to two hours of labour for such activity. There are some car models where the update can take more than two hours. It should be noted that pro-gramming tools are rather expensive, so there is a limit to the number of simulta-neous re-programming.

NEW POSSIBILITIES

FOR CONNECTED CARS

The current method of updating soft-ware in cars was suitable when the amount of software was minimal. Now that software has become vital to the operation and feature-set of cars, the method of software updating must be improved. It is clear that performing the update in the customer location and not in the dealership represents a better and more optimised method in term of cost savings and user experience. According to ABI Research, there will be 210 mil-lion connected cars by 2016, so the main enabler for doing over-the-air update is there: connectivity,➊.

The FOTA (Firmware-Over-The-Air) update process comprises three primary stages: generating the update, managing the delivery of the update, and performing the update.

GENERATING THE UPDATE PACKAGE

To perform a FOTA update, a software update package containing defect fixes or new features must be generated. In order to make this package as small as possible (in general it is less than 5 % of the origi-nal size), the update package includes only the changes (also referred to as the “delta”) between the version that already

exists on the ECU and the new version being deployed to the vehicle, ➋. This update package is typically generated by the owner of the software, most often a tier 1 vendor.

MANAGING THE DELIVERY OF THE

UPDATE PACKAGE

Once generated, the update package is published to a distribution platform. In the mobile industry, this platform is man-aged by either the mobile phone manufac-turer or the network operator. In automo-tive, this platform is managed by the OEM. This platform manages the various versions of the update packages and han-dles the actual network delivery (down-load) of the packages to the appropriate vehicle model and specific ECU. There are typically multiple versions of update pack-ages, each intended for particular vehicle models and configurations. This portion of the process can be an integral part of an overall Telematics or over-the-air (OTA) diagnostics system.

A centralised software package repos-itory is used for the FOTA use cases, ➌. This centralised repository replaces the distribution of software updates to the various dealers. It significantly reduces the Time-To-Market (TTM) of any new software version. This system is also responsible for the delta package deliv-ery to the device. There are several ways to perform such a delivery. In mobile, most market players use a standard pro-tocol developed through the Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA-DM) organisation.

PERFORMING THE UPDATE

In this third stage of the process, the downloaded update package is used to perform the actual update (re-flashing) of the original software image. The update package and the FOTA update software necessary to perform the update occupy a small amount of memory allocated within the embedded device in the vehicle (to address the challenges associated with the limited memory resources). In this stage, the FOTA update software validates that the correct update package has been received and that the update process has

➋ The transfer of the so-called “Delta”, which contains only the differences from the previous version, has a huge impact when large recalls have to be made; it lowers the costs for the manufacturer and the need for bandwidth: for a product recall, the update time can be reduced by up to 50 %

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been successfully completed. It is impor-tant to mention that the FOTA updates do not need to be sequential and can support any-to-any software version update.

However, it can introduce some potential procedure challenges such as how to make sure that the car will not be driven in the middle of the update. Therefore, FOTA adoption in the auto-motive industry will take more time to become fully operational.

INFOTAINMENT UPDATES –

A SERIOUS BUSINESS

More and more car manufacturers are implementing over-the-air software updates as a way to improve functionality, fix software defects and guarantee a user experience that is continuously better. Car manufacturers GM (OnStar) and Daimler (MBRACE 2) have been leaders in recog-nising the value of over-the-air software updating for improving their infotainment systems. For example, GM recently updated the Bluetooth technology to sup-port late model smart phones.

The updating solution must have scope and scale. Scope is the ability and the flexibility to update all of the memory including the user and system space with full or discrete components. As well, the solution must scale to manage millions of updates without any failure and with the highest security possible. This, for exam-

ple, will enable QNX CAR 2 users to update not only the QNX CAR 2 software but also individual applications such as Pandora or the Weather channel.

In the mobile industry, where over-the-air software updating is a well-established practice, manufacturers and service pro-viders realise many benefits:Cost reduction: Over-the-air software updates have reduced warranty costs.Update success rate: Over-the-air software updates deliver the highest success rate.Faster updates: Sending only the code that is different between the original soft-ware and the update (often called the delta) is faster and uses less bandwidth.Customer satisfaction: A fast and auto-matic over-the-air process eliminates the need for the consumer to go to the dealer.

The mobile industry has enjoyed these benefits for some time. The automotive industry needs over-the-air updating even more so because the infotainment system includes millions of lines of code (LOC) and updating this software requires a holistic solution that can manage the whole software life-cycle.

Red Bend Software integrated its-vRapid Mobile update technology, which exists in more than 1.6 bn devices into QNX CAR 2. This enables car manufac-turers and Tier 1 providers the flexibility to create an over-the-air update strategy that is optimised for infotainment sys-tems and also for other embedded sys-

tems in the car. Today, infotainment sys-tems are central in the car cockpit experi-ence. These systems contain not only the QNX CAR 2 but also a variety of applica-tions. Applications for the auto industry are not like applications for mobile devices. Applications for the auto indus-try have been modified in order to meet the car environment and have more voice activation and larger buttons so the driver isn’t distracted.

Car manufacturers are looking at their infotainment system as a differen-tiator when selling the car and a valua-ble asset to generate revenues after the sale. The automobile industry doesn’t want Over-the-Top (OTT) companies controlling the delivery channel to the infotainment system and weakening automotive brands, similar to what hap-pened in the mobile industry.

With a holistic FOTA solution car manufacturers can guarantee ownership of the infotainment firmware and appli-cations, increasing the consumers’ per-ceived value through a much stronger brand. No longer is the auto industry asking whether or not to perform over-the-air updates. Now car manufacturers and tier one suppliers are asking how often and when should updates be pro-vided during the life-cycle of the infotain-ment system to guarantee the highest customer satisfaction.

➌ With dedicated solutions such as Red Bend Fuse, also smaller control units with less memory and less CPU can be updated over-the-air; the delta, which can consist of several updates for individual control units, is transmitted (to the receiver) and distributed to each recipient in the vehicle (via the Update Installer)

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