Unified E/E Architecture Database for Vehicle Design Collaboration
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of modern vehicle electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture design leads to compartmentalized design domains, resulting in inefficient communication and collaboration among designers, which can cause cost overruns, delays, and suboptimal architecture development due to lack of synchronization and incomplete design requirements.
Innovation Solution
A unified data schema and database system that links product planning data, ECU/device specifications, in-vehicle communications, and vehicle harness information, enabling object-oriented design data sharing and collaboration across domains through a graphical user interface (GUI) for enhanced design collaboration, change management, and product lifetime management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If designers work in separate design domains with compartmentalized focus, then each domain can specialize in its specific architecture, but collaboration and information sharing among domains are reduced, leading to delays and cost overruns
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a centralized E/E architecture database as an intermediary that all design domains access. This database serves as a common platform where wire harness, software, ECU, and network bus designers can share and synchronize their design data, eliminating the need for direct complex inter-domain communication while maintaining specialized focus in each domain.
Solution Approach 2:
The E/E architecture database provides universal access and standardized data structures that serve multiple design domains simultaneously. It handles diverse data types including wire harness configurations, software requirements, ECU specifications, and network bus topologies through a unified interface, enabling all domains to benefit from the same collaborative infrastructure.
2Reliability
If a unified E/E architecture is specified with performance requirements, then integration reliability is improved, but the complexity of managing and synchronizing data across multiple domains increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms unstructured design data into standardized parameters and attributes within the database. Each design element (wire harness, ECU, network bus) is represented with defined parameters that can be queried and validated systematically, enabling automated checks for integration reliability while reducing manual data management complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The database establishes predefined data structures, relationships, and validation rules before design work begins. This preliminary setup includes defined schemas for how different domains' data should be organized and related, preventing data inconsistency issues from arising during the design process and reducing the need for complex corrective actions later.
3Productivity
If bottom-up development process is used with domain-focused designers, then specialized expertise is utilized, but synchronization among domains is poor, resulting in suboptimal architecture
Solution Approach 1:
The database implements feedback mechanisms where changes in one domain automatically notify and update related domains. For example, when an ECU specification changes, the system can automatically update related wire harness configurations and network bus assignments, ensuring all domains have synchronized information without manual intervention and preventing information loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates an equipotential information environment where all design domains access the same version of design data through the centralized database. This eliminates information asymmetry between domains, ensuring that wire harness, software, ECU, and network bus designers are all working from the same baseline requirements and specifications.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed herein are computer aided design (CAD) techniques to implement a unified data schema and graphical user interface (GUI) to link ECU/devices, in-vehicle communications, and vehicle harness information together with respect to architectural relation, performance relation, and cost relation, and to facilitate a designer's understanding and manipulation of this information. The domain-specific information from each domain is converted to objects in this unified data schema and stored in a unified database that is accessible to every domain, so that the impact of the current state in the device domain can be accessed and analyzed by a designer from any domain. This approach enables design data sharing and real-time collaboration between different electrical/electronic (E/E) design domains, thereby facilitating the realization of design data collaboration, design change management, and product lifetime management (PLM) and product data management (PDM) implementation.