Analysis platform for FlexRay devices and systems

Paul Boughton
With the new FR-IB100/PCIe FlexRay card and the multibusAnalyser IXXAT enables customers to set up a low-cost analysis platform for FlexRay devices and systems.

The multibusAnalyser for Windows 2000/XP/Windows7 allows for the sending of FlexRay messages for the stimulation or configuration of bus nodes by using pre-defined transmission lists. Received messages can be displayed in scroll or overwrite mode, with changed message content highlighted in colour.

Physical signals contained within the FlexRay messages are interpreted by using a FIBEX data description file and displayed in plain text or as graphics. For offline analysis, the communication can also be recorded on the hard disk. In addition, specific simulation and analysis tasks can be created using a powerful scripting host interface supporting the script languages C # and Visual Basic Script.

The new FR-IB100/PCIe FlexRay interface board is used to access the FlexRay bus. It comes with a 32 bit microcontroller system, two FlexRay channels (2 x 10 Mbit/s) with Freescale MFR4310 protocol chip, and provides a timestamp resolution of 100 ns.

For analysing the FlexRay start-up behavior, the FR-IB100/PCIe has an asynchronous analysis mode. Based on the drivers included within the scope of delivery, customers can develop own applications using C++ or C #. The scope of delivery also includes a FlexRay configuration tool that enables an easy management of the large number of FlexRay configuration parameters. After entering few parameters, such as cycle time, message quantity and length, the tool automatically calculates the dependent parameters and generates the file required for the configuration of the FlexRay protocol chip. Users who have a FIBEX file of their FlexRay network can directly configure the card using the configuration data from the FIBEX file.

For more information, visit www.ixxat.com/flexray