Traffic shaping for resource-efficient in-vehicle communication

In-vehicle communication has become complex and costly due to the growing number of automotive network systems applied for different data types. In this work, our previously proposed in-vehicle network architecture that is based on Internet Protocol (IP) and full-duplex switched Ethernet (IP/Ethernet) is further investigated for real-time audio and video streaming. Quality-of-service (QoS) and resource usage are analyzed for selected IP/Ethernet-based network topologies. Traffic shaping is used to reduce the required network resources and consequently the cost. A novel traffic shaping algorithm is presented that outperforms other traffic shapers in terms of resource usage when applied to variable bit rate video sources in the proposed double star topology. In addition, a new architecture design is introduced for traffic shaper implementation in switches which operates on a per stream basis. Analytical and simulation results confirm that the proposed network architecture with traffic shaping is well-adapted for in-vehicle communication.