Smart sensor and actuator challenges and solutions

The zone E/E architecture significantly affects sensing and actuation functions at the boundary of a vehicle – the so-called edge. In domain architectures, dedicated ECUs that are typically in proximity to the sensors or actuators perform these functions. New features and functions usually result in new ECUs, each with dedicated battery power and networking wires, further increasing harness complexity. The introduction of zonal modules can greatly reduce harness complexity by merging the logical input/output (I/O) functions of multiple ECUs into the zonal module, and by maintaining sensor and actuator locations. This results in separation of physical and logical I/O functionality as shown in Figure 5, which brings new challenges and demands new solutions.

Figure 5 Separation of logical and physical I/O functionality from a domain architecture to a zone architecture.