Designing Hardware-in-loop Testing Platform For Automotive Vehicle ECUs

With the rapid development of vehicle electronics, new generationsof electronics units are developed and produced faster than ever. In orderto fulfill the timing requirement and at the mean while still maintainingthe quality, It becomes an indispensable part to develop a powerful andeasy-using test bench during the whole ECU project. This article is basedon the actual needs of real project, taken the CAPE (Car Access andPassive Entry) ECU as an example, take deep research into ECU testingtechnology, constructing a general ECU test bench.This article analyzes CAPE functions and hardware definitions,defines the functions for each module of the testing system, combines therequirements for general ECUs and specific requirements for CAPE, andbases on the concept of Hardware-In-Loop simulation, defines thehardware and software structure. And at last using LabWindows/CVIdeveloping environment program the testing system and accomplish thistask.The actual testing result has also approved the validity of the testplatform. During the developing of the samples, this platform has fulfilledthe testing tasks with a steady performance, and easily can be updated and maintained, improved the test efficiency, fulfilled the tasks definedpreviously. Now, the test platform has been applied on several differentproducts, in this case reduced a lot of costs and work package, has quitegood practical value.