Building Automotive Software Component within the AutoSAR Environment - A Case Study

The number of electronic component units (ECU) involved in building a motor vehicle is increasing exponentially. Each ECU is a system embedded with software. Software are used in the ECUs of sub-systems of a motor vehicle such as integrated engine control, transmission control, adaptive cruise control, advance warning systems, crash avoidance, etc. It's no longer possible to study an ECU as a stand-alone system. The automotive industry is facing the challenge of the rapidly growing significance of software and software-based functionalities. Research has shown that software complexity is a major reason for project delay and cost overrun. AutoSAR is a very recent international effort to address the issue of complexity management of highly integrated ECUs for future requirements. This paper presents the building of a power window control (PWC) software component using the AutoSAR methodology. While how AutoSAR will work is not well understood yet, the contribution of this paper is that it presents a case study of how a PWC software component could integrate into the AutoSAR environment.