A method of implementing network management without OSEK/VDX OS

As the complexity of automotive networks systems increased, network management mechanisms becoming more important. Although OSEK/VDX includes network management (NM), it is too expensive to use in all ECUs. Since some electronic control units (ECUs) provide only simple functionality, they do not need to use the whole range of OSEK/VDX functions. In this case, OSEK/VDX causes unnecessary overhead. Moreover, direct NM is performed by dedicated communication so it is not suitable for large networks. Therefore, we propose a lighter NM mechanism that can be implemented without the use of the OSEK/VDX OS. Proposed NM mechanism is based on OSEK/VDX NM and can therefore communicate with it. We implement the proposed NM mechanism with and without the OSEK/VDX OS. We apply the proposed NM mechanism to a practical network system using Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol for verification.