Design of a Modular Test Bench for Real-Time Analysis of Energy Management Systems and Autonomous Driving Requirements in Automotive Power Nets

Current research topics in the automotive industry focus on trends such as autonomous driving and its associated challenges. Various approaches exist to meet the constantly increasing power demand in the vehicle electrical system and simultaneously ensure the supply reliability of safety-critical consumers, such as camera systems and central computers required for data processing. Current industry standards require the installation of fully redundant auxiliary systems to increase supply reliability, which has drawbacks in terms of efficiency and weight. In contrast, the alternative approaches underlying this paper consider splitting supply zones and moving to ring architectures to ensure energy security. At the same time, topics such as maximizing efficiency and user experience are becoming increasingly important. In order to investigate these topics beyond simulation, this paper presents the design of a highly modular and real-time capable test bench for vehicle electrical systems. The test bench is laid out to represent various vehicle configurations and architectures, including the necessary data communication and integrated energy management. The requirements for this purpose are presented, and the concrete implementation is outlined.