As the consumer demand for increasingly complex automotive systems increases, companies continue to strive for more efficient means of transferring data between automotive components. Cars have utilized the CAN bus standard since the 1990s to send data at a rate of one megabit per second between sensors and engine controllers; however, the addition of airbags and safety technologies such as vehicle stability control are in danger of overpowering the available data transfer rate.
Automotive companies Micrel and Marvell are examining the possibility of utilizing Ethernet to assist in the development of more efficient automotive networking capabilities. Ethernet has the potential to move data at higher rates and, according to senior product manager Michael Jones of Micrel, is less expensive than other possible solutions. However, Ethernet has proved difficult to implement on a wide scale due to its electromagnetic emissions, which do not comply with current automotive standards. Shielded cables, while a possible solution, are too expensive to implement in the large quantities necessary for consumer production.
In order to combat this problem, the two companies have developed electromagnetic compliance solutions using an assembly of simple twisted-pair cables and filters to limit emission. Micrel and Marvell plan to continue research and development and hope to produce a more sophisticated Ethernet network that is able to simultaneously communicate with multiple automotive systems.
