MOST150 Now Allows Safety Critical Applications

The MOST Cooperation welcomes the latest research results proving that MOST150 is ready to support safety-critical applications and may be available as the future network for driver assistance systems. By supporting the new domain of driver assist, the latest MOST Technology completes the major fields of in-car uses such as entertainment, information, mobile connectivity, and connected services. Today's MOST is now exceeding the limits of infotainment, stated Harald Schoepp, member of the MOST Cooperation steering committee. Driver assistance functions are starting to complete and extend the feature set of traditional infotainment systems. Along with information features such as navigation systems, traffic information, and function warnings, the number of vehicles with driver assistance features like camera systems, distance controls, or lane departure warnings will be rapidly increasing.

The infrastructure for driver assist systems (sensors, networks and processing units) is fairly complex and expensive. At the same time, the technical specifications of such infrastructure for different application areas overlap to a large extent. Therefore, looking in particular at sensors and networks, it is inevitable to consider the requirements for active safety or pre-safe applications when defining such system components for driver assist systems. Consequently, a suitable network will have to be both high speed and high security. None of today's existing vehicle networks fulfills these requirements completely. However, from all candidates, the MOST network is one that comes very close to the new requirements.

With MOST150, automotive network technology is ready to take this essential step beyond infotainment: Necessary improvements are being investigated and recent studies prove MOST to be prepared for safety-critical applications. Flexible topology options, new physical layers and protocol enhancements are being worked on. For example, the implementation of MOST as a sensor network can be the first step to move MOST out of the infotainment-only world into driver assist applications.