Response-time analysis of the flexray dynamic segment under consideration of slot-multiplexing

Driven by the increasing demand for high speed communication of the in-vehicle automotive systems, car manufacturers and suppliers have developed the FlexRay communication protocol. Being dedicated to safety and time-critical applications, the availability of appropriate timing analysis methods for the prediction of the FlexRay timing behaviour is essential. Consequently, several analysis solutions have been proposed. Due to the limitation in the number of frame identifiers in the FlexRay dynamic segment, the slot-multiplexing (or cycle-multiplexing) mechanism is gaining importance for realistic systems. This mechanism allows to share frame identifiers between messages. Moreover, cycle multiplexing in the dynamic segment is often used for signals with deadlines beyond the signal period. Despite its practical relevance, none of the existing response-time analysis approaches is able to consider slot-multiplexing in the dynamic segment for realistic configurations. In this paper we overcome limitations of previous work and present a more general approach for the response-time analysis of the FlexRay dynamic segment, which accurately takes slot-multiplexing into account. We illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach with an industrial case-study and synthetic testcases.