Vehicle Internet Appliance – VIA

Objective:

The main objective of this research project is to effectively utilize the Internet technology and services to design the Vehicle Internet Appliances (VIA) and Auto Internet-based services. The VIA is a novel idea to bring in and integrate the Internet capabilities with the existing auto standard networks such as the CAN (Controller Area Network) and the MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transfer) and thus make these networks Internet ready.

Motivation:

Multiple sub-networks (CAN, MOST and the internet protocol) have been introduced in today’s car. However, these approaches have failed to adequately address and exploit the emerging Internet technologies and services. Our proposed idea is to design and implement a mobile website for each vehicle that is universally accessible (with appropriate security mechanisms) as any contemporary website. Such a website would allow one to access dynamic information about the vehicle almost real-time, such as speed, internal temperature, fuel supply, as well as live video and audio information from the automobile by utilizing the above mentioned sub-networks.

Architecture:

The main functions of the proposed VIA can be divided into four logical domains:

1. User Interface Domain.

2. Mobility Support Domain.

3. Network Interoperability Domain and

4. Auto Information Domain.

The VIA Basic Architecture

Our Approach:

The VIA server, embedded Linux processor, implements all the functions outlined in the four domains mentioned above. The VIA implementation consists of the following main modules: the ARM926EJ-S with its embedded LINUX operating system, the CAN, MOST and the Mobile Transceivers for transmission and reception of signals, the different protocol handlers and FIFO. The main functions to be provided by each module are outlined in the following subsections:

1. The ARM processor (ARM926EJ-S):

The importance of using the ARM embedded processor lies in its support of the LINUX operating system along with the java acceleration hardware. In the rapidly developing market for internet-enabled applications, Java offers advantages for rapid application development and prototyping. The ARM processor architecture allows application specific peripherals to be attached to the processor. This enables the various in-car networks such as the CAN, MOST and the Mobile IP to be seamlessly integrated and interoperated.

2. LINUX Embedded Operating System:

A SOAP-Apache web server that runs in the LINUX operating system provides the basic VIA services using SOAP. The SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a lightweight protocol for exchanging of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is a protocol specification for invoking methods on servers, services, components and objects. The VIA can be viewed as a mobile server that can be queried for an information regarding the status of various parts of the car (on-line monitoring and field test data).

3. CAN / MOST Protocol Stripper and Adder:

The CAN/MOST protocol Stripper module performs the action of removing the header and End of Frame from the received packets. The 11bit identifier field is used to identify the device that has sent the packet. The data field tells the status of the device along with the control field, so these fields are retained and sent to the next higher layer. The protocol Stripper module can be coded as a C program and can be run in the LINUX embedded operating system. The CAN/MOST adder most does just the opposite action of the stripper module.

4. First In First Out Buffer (FIFO)

The FIFO is used to bridge the speed difference between the various protocols operating at different speeds. The data transfer rate of MOST systems is 25Mbps and lot of data will be transferred so a larger capacity FIFO is required by the MOST protocol handler and the MOST protocol Stripper and Adder modules. In the case of CAN network the data rate is 1Mbps, so a smaller capacity FIFO will be sufficient for the CAN protocol handler modules. The FIFO can be a reserved stack of addresses in the memory space used by the embedded LINUX operating system.

VIA-Based Services:

1. VIA Dynamic discovery service:

In this research, we will develop architecture based on Java/Jini technology to enable VIA to support a dynamic discovery service (DDS). At the Internet Technology Laboratory (ITL), a proof-of-concept prototype of the DDS has been implemented using Java and JINI lookup services. In this project, we adopt the current prototype to implement the required auto VIA Internet services.

2. Lookup Service (LUS):

It is a special service that keeps track of all other VIA services in the community. When a provider of a VIA service wishes to make itself available, it “publishes” its proxy by storing it in a lookup service. Clients (VIA users) can then connect to the LUS and ask what services are available. The LUS can also inform interested parties when new services appear or when services leave the community through remote events. LUS's announce their existence using the multicast announcement protocol.

3. The in-vehicle VIA Services:

The VIA clients/users will have access to a wide range of auto related information and entertainment services that can be added and removed dynamically. The various suppliers of VIA services advertise their products through an interface that defines the type and features of their services. There are one or more LUS s running in the network waiting for the VIA service providers to register with them. A provider locates the LUS using a combination of multicast announcement and unicast response protocols. This process is known as discovery. Then the supplier sends the service proxy object to the LUS to register itself. This is the join process. For a car user there will be a number of VIA services and every supplier registers its proxy object with the LUS it discovers. There can be a number of attributes associated with each service. Some of the important attributes are Location, Service Id, Subscription Fee/Price, Period, etc. There is a HTTP server running, so that the proxy object class can be downloaded on demand when the VIA client/user makes a request to access one of the provided services. The VIA service provider, which satisfy the request, is discovered and the LUS sends the matching provider’s proxy to the car VIA Soap server. The VIA server establishes a connection with the service provider and the transaction is started. In what follows, we describe two examples on how to use this architecture to provide information about car components and how to achieve on-line monitoring and protection.

Research Milestones:

The research activities can be summarized by the following tasks:

1. Development of Vehicle Internet Appliance architecture that integrates and interoperates existing vehicle networks with Internet protocols and services. This involves the design of the stand-alone module in the car with the ARM based processor and its support chips. Once that is done, we can use Verilog HDL to describe the hardware architecture. The ARM Development Suite ADS1.1 will be used to develop and evaluate the VIA hardware functionality and performance.

2. Development of the VIA routing functions and interoperability mechanisms between standard car networks (e.g., CAN, MOST) and the Internet.

3. Development of the Apache Soap Server running on the ARM processor.

4. Development of VIA Internet services to achieve open and on-line access to all the physical resources inside any vehicle by accessing its own website (Auto-based URL). In this activity, we will focus on three areas: a)Entertainment, b) Collaboration, and c) Field Test Data.