Connected Vehicle Validation 2.0

FEV TST: Early validation of connected vehicle systems and cyber security

28. August 2017 | Software & Testing Solutions

Vehicle apps, smartphone connections, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, 4G/LTE, and soon 5G are just a few of connectivity features a modern car has: Connected Vehicle is no longer a vision but has become reality and along with it serious complexity and challenges (i.e. Cyber Security) for the integration of all these features and functions into the Smart Vehicle eco-system. As a leading development services provider, FEV has supported these developments from their formative stages and has developed unique expertise from development, implementation, integration, through validation. To support these various program development cycles or stages FEV has developed the “Telematics System Tester” (FEV TST) which has become an important tool for integrating and validating increasingly complex connected vehicle components and systems, even when used in the very early development stages. This test system enables the simulation of relevant connected vehicle components, applications as well as signals and data in a controlled environment with the ability to also replay recorded scenarios. After successfully completing several series-production development, integration, and validation projects with connected vehicles, the project results indicate that the FEV TST is able to reduce time and effort by up to 30%, which is especially relevant in the context of shortening innovation cycles. Further, tremendous benefits are achieved using this test system platform for continuous and regression testing including for Cyber Security.

 

“In today’s connected vehicle and certainly tomorrow’s Smart Vehicles, connectivity will be a must-have upon which not only telematics and infotainment systems rely on but also the coming autonomous driving features. Connectivity will enable the Smart Vehicle and its reliability will allow OEMs to offer a wide range of additional applications for the driver and society as a whole”, explained Stephan Tarnutzer, Vice President Electronics and Global Center of Excellence Smart Vehicle at FEV. “The vehicle of the future will be part of the Internet of Things (IoT) contributing Terra-bytes of data and receiving or consuming large amounts of data when driving from various sources both inside and certainly outside the vehicle.” For this reason, Connected Vehicle systems need to be validated on an “end-to-end” basis with a Connected System Thinking approach and methodology, where the vehicle is only one part of the system. In addition to the “standard or traditional” vehicle functions, all of the other services and communication structures must also be considered during the validation phase as well as all components outside of the car (cloud, back-end, apps, etc.). Not the least of the challenges associated with the Connected Vehicle is Cyber Security for which new threats are to be addressed and validated on a daily basis. “A system validation that meets all these demands can only be tackled successfully through the use of automated test systems or the task is overwhelming and there are not enough people to do this work manually, reliably, and consistently”, resumed Tarnutzer.

 

>> MODERN SMART VEHICLES HAVE UP TO 100 CONTROL UNITS, HAVE COMBINED SOFTWARE WITH OVER 100 MILLION LINES OF CODE, AND GENERATE CLOSE TO A TERRA-BYTE OF DATA

Complex Connected Vehicle Systems

The FEV TST platform makes it possible to simulate relevant signals and data in a controlled environment or to replay recorded scenarios. These signals include the vehicle communication buses, cellular network, GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi and the simulation of Smartphone apps as well as connection to the Internet for backend services, which are necessary in order to develop the required use cases for the connected vehicle system and used for end-to-end testing. In addition, the FEV TST can simulate different scenarios for mobile network and GPS signals. For example, the influence of weak or bounced satellite signals or tower-to-tower cellular signal hand-over scenarios can already be assessed in the laboratory. “With FEV’s TST the connected system under test can be validated easily and in a short amount of time against hundreds of different scenarios and evaluated in a controlled environment”, outlined Tarnutzer. “An additional back-office application maps a simulated chain of information – for example, the data flow of a door opening command from the smartphone, over the backend, to the vehicle’s telematics unit and the vehicle’s CAN bus.”
The latest addition to the FEV TST platform is for the automation of various Cyber Security related tests involving various industry standard cyber attack tools through the numerous threat vectors present in a car (i.e. Bluetooth, WiFi, CAN, etc.) and simulated on the TST. The FEV system allows for the automation of such Cyber Security related testing and validation which is very helpful during development as well as regression testing. The TST has shown to reduce the manual testing effort related to such activities by over 50% allowing resources to be deployed for other types of testing.

Early Development

Modern connectivity systems for a car alone usually consist of over 5 different components, usually from different suppliers. Frequently, not all of these components are available at the same time during the development phase for integration and validation testing. The FEV TST can be included from the beginning in the process to support the development effort as well as test and validation. The FEV TST can be configured so that it closely simulates the real system to quickly help verify requirements for each of these components. For the Cyber Security related tasks within a development program, the TST can support such activities as well from the start and help identify cyber security implementation gaps in components early on.

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