Freescale Semiconductor,inc.

Robert Boschgmbh

Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft

Daimler Chrysler Ag

Gm Global Technolgoy Operations, Inc.

Motorola Corporation

Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Nxp B.v.

Nxp Usa, Inc.

Mathias Rausch

Christopher Temple

Florian Bogenberger

Bernd Müller

Anton Schedl

Bernd Hedenetz

Thomas Wuerz

Florian Hartwich

Thomas M Forest

Peter Fuhrmann

Robert Hugel

Christian Ebner

Manfred Bruno Zinke

Martin Peller

Bernd Elend

Josef Berwanger

Harald Eisele

Arnold W Millsap

Ralf Belschner

Jörn Ungermann

Harald Weiler

Peter Lohrmann

Thomas Führer

Patrick Willem Heuts

Matthias Kühlewein

Manfred P Thanner

Dirk Moeller

Clemens Alfred Roettgermann

Gregor Pokorny

Leonard Link

An advanced communication controller unit for a distributed communication system having a plurality of communication controller units, at least one being an advanced communication controller unit, each coupled to a communication medium and adapted to communicate using a communication is presented. The advanced communication controller unit comprises a protocol event recording circuit having a monitoring input connected to at least one protocol event data transmission path of the advanced communication controller unit and a debug output connected to a memory device; and adapted to filter protocol event data received from the monitoring input depending on at least one configuration parameter and to provide filtered protocol event data to the debug output. A method for recording protocol events using a protocol event recording circuit in an advanced communication controller unit and a vehicle comprising at least one advanced communication controller unit are also disclosed.

Device and method for recording protocol events in an advanced communication system

A communication network includes a plurality of communication nodes, each node arranged for communicating frames of data with the other nodes during a dynamic segment having dynamic communication slots with respective communication slot numbers. Each of the plurality of communication nodes includes a time base having consecutive timeslots, associated with the dynamic communication slots; a communication slot number controller, for adjusting a communication slot number, a minislot counter for counting minislots while the adjusting of the communication slot counter is suspended and a control unit for controlling the communication slot number controller to either continue adjusting of the slot number if the determined duration of the reception is above a certain threshold or to continue adjusting of the slot number using the value obtained with the minislot counter if the determined duration of the reception is below a certain threshold.

Method for adjusting time slots in a communication network

A computer node comprising a synchronization unit for comparing network timing information for a first network with network timing information for a second network and for communicating to the first network the sign of the difference between the first network timing information and the second network timing information to allow the first network to alter its network timing information using the sign of the difference to allow the network timing difference between the first network and the second network to be reduced.

Network node

A data communication network may, include a first sub-network and a second sub-network. The first sub-network may include two or more two master clocks, and a synchronization system connected to the master clocks. The synchronization system may, for determine a time-base for the master clocks and control the master clocks based on the determined time-base. The first sub-network may include one or more slave synchronization data source for generating slave clock synchronization data derived from time information of the master clocks. The second sub-network may include one or more slave clocks and a slave clock time-base controller connected to the slave synchronization data source. The time-base controller may receive the slave clock synchronization data and control one or more of the one or more slave clocks in accordance with the slave clock synchronization data.

Network and method for setting a time-base of a node in the network

A multi-node communications system is provided with communications protocol using both static () (pre-determined) and dynamic (. . . ) (run-time determined) consecutive communication slots is used. The system has a number of distributed communication nodes, each node being arranged for communicating frames of data with the other nodes during both the static (. . . ) and the dynamic (. . . ) communication slots. Each node includes a synchronized time basemade up of consecutive timeslots (. . . ). The timebasehas substantially the same error tolerance in each node. For static communication (), a predetermined number of timeslots () are utilized for each static communication slot. For dynamic communication a dynamically allocated number of timeslots () are utilized for each dynamic communication slot. In this way both static and dynamic media arbitration is provided within a periodically recurring communication pattern. Communication jitter is well defined and dealt with, and large oscillator drifts are compensated for.

System node and method for providing media arbitration

A data communication network may include two or more master clocks, and a synchronization system connected to the master clocks. The synchronization system may determine a time-base for the master clocks. The synchronization system may control the master clocks according to the determined time-base. The data communication network may include one or more slave clocks. The slave clocks may be controlled by a slave clock time-base controller based on time information of a single selected master clock selected from the master clocks.

The invention refers to a method for monitoring a communication media access schedule of a communication controller () of a communication system () by means of a bus guardian (). The communication system () comprises a communication media () and nodes () connected to the communication media (). Each node () comprises a communication controller () and a bus guardian () assigned to the communication controller (). Messages are transmitted among the nodes () across the communication media () based on a cyclic time triggered communication media access scheme. In order to provide a mechanism which allows the bus guardian () to monitor the communication media access scheme of the communication controller () even during startup of the communication it is suggested, that the bus guardian () has a priori knowledge about possible deviations from the communication media access schedule during startup of the communication and that the bus guardian () during startup makes use of the a priori knowledge to distinguish between an allowed deviation and a forbidden deviation caused by a failure of the communication controller ().

Method for monitoring a communication media access schedule of a communication controller of a communication system

A self-routing communication network () having: a plurality of nodes (N-N); a plurality of star couplers (S-S) each having a plurality of inputs and a plurality of outputs; and communication paths coupled between the plurality of star couplers and the plurality of nodes for communication therebetween of frames of information, including at least one redundant communication path (L-L), and each of the star couplers sensing which of its inputs first receives a frame and passing only the frame first received. The frames each have a fram-start-sequence (FSS), and the star couplers change the fram-start-sequences before outputting the frame of information e.g. by reducing the size of a frame's fram-start-sequence by a predetermined amount (e.g., 2 bits), whereby interconnection failure may be diagnosed by analyzing the frame-start-sequence.

Self-routing, star-coupler-based communication network

A method and a bit stream decoding unit for bit stream decoding has a bit stream comprising a number of consecutive samples. In order to provide for rapid and, in particular, reliable decoding of the bit stream, a detection window comprising a number of samples is defined and the detection window is positioned at certain positions on the bit stream in order to comprise certain samples with respective sample values. A majority voting is applied to the sample values in the detection window and, in dependence on the result of the majority voting, the bit stream is decoded and respective bit values are generated.

Method and bit stream decoding unit using majority voting

The present invention provides an improved clock synchronization algorithm for a distributed system intended for real time applications by performing at the same time an off-set correction and a clock read correction at each node of the distributed system. Expensive oscillators can be avoided and synchronization can be established faster and with higher precision.

Clock synchronization in a distributed system

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Markt Schwaben, Germany

Mathias Rausch