Communication Scheme for a Modular Automotive Power Network Management

The automotive industry is facing accelerating update cycles for software products as well as for entertainment components. At the same time, more sustainable vehicles are required. This causes the necessity to integrate new software and hardware products in an existing vehicle. Additionally, a rising variety of electric comfort elements increases the complexity of the automotive power network (APN). In order to address these challenges, we propose a modular and flexible power network management based on auction theory for modern vehicular architectures. The approach facilitates the effortless integration of new components in the APN. Furthermore, by the combination with a service-oriented architecture (SOA) communication paradigm, the algorithm is safe for a single electronic control unit failure. In this contribution, we elaborate the SOA communication within the load management and define a procedure to handle switching loads. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated with simulations considering an exemplary APN with constraints in the power electronics.