A low-power transceiver design for FlexRay-based communication systems

This paper presents a FlexRay Transceiver (FRT) used in an in-vehicle network compliant with FlexRay physical layer standards. FlexRay is a new standard for data/signal communication among ECUs (electronic control unit) installed in a vehicle. FRT at least comprises two major blocks in the physical layer design: the data transmission block, i.e., Bus Driver (BD), which is used to generate signals on the bus and recognize the signal electrical characteristics on the bus; and the control block, i.e., Major Controller, which is in charge of data path, security, and safety. The proposed FRT design in this work is implemented using a typical 0.18μm CMOS process. The total core area is 1.01×0.894 mm2 and the power consumption is 76.62 mW at a 80 MHz system clock.