Device for storing data in a motor vehicle

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a device and a method for storing data in a motor vehicle.

2. Description of the Related Art

Embedded systems for control and regulation are referred to in general as control devices in automotive electronics. Conventional control devices known from the existing art are as a rule equipped with a RAM or ROM memory device, but for the purpose of a possible change of configuration are usually equipped with an electrically erasable and programmable memory, a so-called EEPROM, designated a flash memory.

As a representative example of this type of system, European Patent EP 0694840 B1 discloses a motor vehicle control device that has a microcomputer having an electrically erasable and programmable memory. In the electrically erasable and programmable memory, a corresponding bit pattern is stored on at least one memory location for storing information. The entry to the memory location is monitored during operation. If the memory location is recognized as defective, a different memory location of the electrically erasable and programmable memory is selected for the storing of the information. The monitoring of the memory location is based on the fact that for the information at least one redundantly designed bit pattern is permissible, and that means are present that compare the memory content of the memory location with the permissible bit patterns.

If the memory content of the memory location for the storing of the information does not agree with one of the permissible bit patterns, the memory location is recognized as defective.

The present invention provides a method for storing data in a motor vehicle, a corresponding device, a corresponding computer program, and a corresponding storage medium.

A basic idea of this solution is the opening up of storage devices that are available or distributed in the vehicle network for the control devices that are also connected to the vehicle network. In this way, the commonly used data storage device is available to said control devices for access and for use, in the manner of a local memory device.

Here, the data memory accessible via the vehicle network can assume the form of a storage medium integrated centrally in the vehicle network, or can be composed of released distributed memory devices of other domain control devices connected to the vehicle network. These include above all domain control devices from the infotainment domain, because there larger memory stores can be available. The suitability of such domain control devices for the described purpose exceeds that of typical embedded control devices, because bus communication systems are for the most part used to capacity, and the storage equipment of embedded control devices is currently standardly too small.

Alternatively, a plurality of storage locations is also possible, so that an optimal partitioning with regard to existing vehicle equipment variants and E/E architectures can be achieved.

A further advantage is the multiple usage of the same memory device thereby made possible, analogous for example to the multiple usage of a home network NAS by a multiplicity of applications. In this way, current map data, network caching, or software updates can easily be maintained within a vehicle without this storage unit having to be designed as the maximum of the individual applications.

The central or distributed memory can be achieved via the vehicle network for other control devices that in turn are connected and can communicate via various communication bus systems in the vehicle network, such as CAN, LIN, MOST, FlexRay, or Ethernet. In the simplest case, for this purpose the data memory device is connected to the gateway via Ethernet, and only control devices connected via Ethernet can access the data memory device using suitable NFS or SMB/CIFS protocols. Preferably, however, a service-oriented communication, e.g. SOME/IP, is used. Also conceivable is a storage region based on a data file system or based on a block memory, which can make use of the control devices by partitioning, boot loading, or mounting for data stores, or can be used for the starting up of an operating system.

Through the proposed data memory device, a wide variety of read-write error recognition, and possibly error removal, methods are enabled, or alternatively at least additional safety criteria are enabled for the error-free and/or error-recognizing and secure storage and transmission from and to the memory device. In this way, the memory device can also be used for safety-relevant tasks and data storage, and not only for safety-uncritical multimedia application purposes.

In addition, the data storage device ensures that for example data that is old and not required are deleted if particular preconditions for this exist, so that the data storage device is not unnecessarily occupied with data that are no longer required.

The use of a sufficiently large central data storage device for pure data storage makes it possible for example to store downloads of greater quantities of data there, and to buffer them there, if the storage volume of a local storage device is not sufficient as a storage location. In this way, local storage limitations are circumvented.

The FIGURE shows the schematic diagram of a motor vehicle equipped with a device according to a specific embodiment of the present invention.

The FIGURE illustrates the basic design of a motor vehicle 20 adapted for carrying out the proposed method. For this purpose, motor vehicle 20 is equipped with four communication networks 22 , 24 , 26 , 28 : an Ethernet 22 , a Controller Area Network (CAN) 24 , a media-oriented systems transport bus (MOST) 26 , and a FlexRay bus 28 . A first control device 12 is connected to a central gateway 18 via MOST bus 26 , a second control device 14 is connected to the central gateway via Ethernet 22 , and a third control device 16 is connected to the central gateway via the FlexRay bus 28 , a data storage device 10 also being connected to the central gateway via Ethernet 22 . A connectivity control unit 30 , also connected to central gateway 18 by Ethernet 22 , acts as a hardware platform for executing a transmission software that makes it possible to transmit data via the air interface (OTA) into motor vehicle 20 , and to write it to data storage device 10 . Further devices, not individually identified, are networked to central gateway 18 via Controller Area Network 24 , Ethernet 22 , or FlexRay 28 .

For the functional explanation of the depicted device, a method for downloading data from the Internet is described as an example. For this purpose, an application software executed on second control device 14 is first connected via Ethernet 22 to data storage device 10 , and connects this storage device logically to control device 14 . The application software now asks the transmission software to transmit the data—for example designated by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)—into motor vehicle 20 and to write it to data storage device 10 . After the termination of the transmission process, the application software is able to gain read access, via the communication network, to connected data storage device 10 for the use of the written data, before the software releases the data storage device for use by other applications.

The connection of the application software to data storage device 10 takes place in the present example using the Internet protocol (IP). The logical connection of data storage device 10 is accomplished on this basis, preferably in the context of service-oriented communication (SOC) using the stated Internet protocol. A middleware suitable for this purpose for automotive control communication is known to those skilled in the art, for example under the product designation Scalable Service-Oriented Middleware over IP (SOME/IP).