Advances in Rapid Control Prototyping

The technological development in the field of automotive electronics is proceeding at almost break-neck speed. The functions being developed and integrated into cars are growing in complexity and volume. With the increasing number and variety of sensors and actuators, electronics have to handle a greater amount of data, and the acquisition and generation of I/O signals is also growing in complexity, for example, in engine management applications. Moreover, intelligent and complex algorithms need to be processed in a minimum of time. This all intensifies the need for Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP), a proven method of decisively speeding up the model-based software development process of automotive electronic control units (ECUs). All these demanding tasks, including connecting sensors and actuators to the RCP system, need to be performed within a standard prototyping environment. The first part of the paper presents a new modular hardware platform for signal conditioning and power stages. The second part describes the different phases of a field trial of this new hardware platform. This was a pilot project in which the NISSAN MOTOR CO., LTD, Japan used the new signal conditioning and power stage hardware in a fullpass application to control its well established VQ engine.