Collaboration seeks to innovate in-vehicle infotainment

Carmakers are looking for robust, low latency networks with high quality of service for in-vehicle infotainment. Modern infotainment systems consist of entertainment features like radio receivers, amplifiers and media players, which can all integrate multiple connected sources. These robust systems need an efficient and high-bandwidth automotive network to ensure the quality that consumers expect in high-end, automotive environments.

Automotive networks are a challenging network environment and modern Ethernet AVB is designed to address that environment with very high quality of service (QoS). These networks often carry data from navigation systems and multiple camera views of the surrounding environment directly to passengers and drivers. Ethernet is a popular solution for in-vehicle networking due to its popularity in consumer and industrial markets, its cost-effectiveness, and available software.

Using the R-Car H2 E-AVB HW support, Pelagicore has developed an open source implementation of EAVB that demonstrates an infotainment use case using the Ethernet AVB network.

This work is directly related to the AVB project started by Pelagicore in the GENIVI consortium in order to produce an automotive Ethernet AVB Reference Software Stack to be made available to all GENIVI members as open source. The Renesas R-Car H2 SoC platform has been chosen because of its special E-AVB support in the MAC, which provides the necessary level of performance and precision for in-vehicle audio and video applications. Pelagicore and Renesas consider this proof of concept as the first step of their cooperation and plan to work together to bring more innovation in the future for in-vehicle infotainment networks.