Design and implementation of a vehicle interface protocol using an IEEE 1394 network

A wide variety of in-vehicle devices such as camera sensors, navigation systems, telematics and communication equipments have been incorporated into a vehicle to realize Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) applications. Because an efficient standardized network is required, ITS Data Bus (IDB) has been discussed to carry high-speed multimedia data for audio, video and other real-time ITS applications. For connecting devices in a standardized manner, the IDB network has architecture with a gateway called vehicle interface which is located between automaker’s proprietary network and the standardized IDB network. IEEE 1394 (also known as iLink or FireWire), which can transport multimedia data for consumer electronics, is a good candidate for IDB network. In this paper, we analyze the issues for existing AV/C protocol (application layer protocol over IEEE 1394) to comprise the IDB network. In addition, we designed and implemented the vehicle interface protocol as a higher layer of IEEE 1394 to address the AV/C protocol issues for realizing the whole IDB network architecture.