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Technical Article
May 2012
High-speed measurements for electric and hybrid vehicles
The drives of electric or hybrid vehicles are generally controlled by
pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals. The advantage of PWM
technology is that it incurs very low power losses at power switch-
es, because they only need to be operated in two operating states:
fully conducting or fully blocking. The frequency of the PWM signals
typically lies in the 10 20 kHz range, and in exceptional cases up
to 100 kHz. Maximum sampling rates of only 1 kHz are achievable
for internal ECU signals when XCP a widely used standardized
measurement and calibration protocol for vehicle development is
used together with communication over the CAN or FlexRay bus
system. PWM signals cannot be acquired in this method.
That is why the debug and data trace interfaces are used for fast
access to ECU variables. These interfaces can vary significantly
depending on the type of microcontroller that is implemented. The
measurement hardware is interfaced to the ECU over a Plug-On
Device (POD). The maximum allowable distance between the
microcontrollers debug pins and the POD is 10 cm. Communication
between the measuring instrumentation module and the test PC is
over XCP on Ethernet in accordance with the MCD-1 XCP standard
from ASAM. The physical connection is made by a standard CAT-5
Ethernet cable. Essentially, two different measurement methods
are distinguished: the RAM copy method and the data trace
method. They are presented in this article, together with their
advantages and disadvantages, based on current microcontrollers
and new microcontrollers that will be available soon. The different
data trace methods refer to two types of 32-bit microcontrollers
that are primarily used in powertrain ECUs and their successors:
Freescale PowerPC (primary market: USA) and Infineon TriCore
(primary market: Europe).
RAM copy method
The RAM copy method is a generic method, and can be used for cur-
rent and future generations of 32-bit microcontrollers from various
manufacturers. For the Infineon TriCore or XC2000, access is via
the Device Access Port (DAP) interface; for the PowerPC devices
New measurement concepts enable high data rates and frequent sampling times
In the development of electric and hybrid vehicles, in particular, the requirements for instrumentation used to measure
internal ECU signals are very high. Nonetheless, measurement data rates of up to 30 Mbyte/s and the necessary sampling
rates of 100 kHz can be achieved with the latest generations of microcontrollers and an intelligent measuring instrumenta-
tion solution. The ECUs CPU is not loaded here.
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Technical Article
May 2012
from Freescale or V850 E2 processors from Renesas, access is via
the Nexus Class 2+ interface. In this method, the ECU software ini-
tiates a RAM copy function according to the cycle time of the vari-
ous ECU tasks. The measurement signals must be preconfigured
over XCP on Ethernet. The mapping of signal names and RAM
addresses is described in an A2L file (ASAM standardized ECU
description file for signal-oriented RAM accesses). Once all mea-
surement signals have been copied, the signals are transmitted to
the base module for measurement data according to the existing
debug interfaces (Figure 1). This concept is referred to as Online
Data Acquisition (OLDA).
Compared to CAN, the measurement data rate and sampling rate
are improved by a factor of 20, i.e. 0.5 to 1 Mbyte/s of measure-
ment data can be acquired with a sampling rate of 10 20 kHz. The
copying operation loads the CPU approx. 4% at 1 Mbyte/s.
Data trace concept for Nexus Class 3 current Freescale
PowerPC
Most devices of the current Freescale PowerPC series support the
data trace method of Nexus Class 3. In this case, the developer
configures one or two monitoring windows with a maximum total
size of 512 kByte in the ECU RAM. Any changes within these moni-
toring windows are transmitted to the POD via Nexus Class 3 with-
out any additional CPU load. Transmission rates for raw data of up
to 100 MByte/s are possible over the High Speed Serial Link cable.
The advantage of this concept is that the base module for measure-
ment data always contains a consistent mirrored RAM of the ECUs
RAM. An ECU software trigger interrupts the data flow within the
measurement data base module, where new changes are saved in a
First In, First Out (FIFO) buffer in RAM. The measurement is initiat-
ed by one of up to 256 different software triggers, and the con-
tents of the mirrored RAM are frozen. Based on the measurement
configuration, the signals are read out from the mirrored RAM in
the base module for measurement data and are sent to the mea-
surement and calibration tool over XCP on Ethernet (Figure 2).
Advantages of the Nexus Class 3 solution:
> The maximum measurement data rate of 30 Mbyte/s is a factor
of 30 times larger than with Nexus Class 2+ and 600 times larger
than with XCP on CAN.
> The CPU is typically not loaded by the measurement.
> All PWM drive signals can be measured at the 100 kHz sampling
rate without any problems.
The disadvantage of this solution lies in the fact that significant
effort is involved in connecting the POD with its 25 pins to the
microcontroller, and it must process a very large raw data stream of
100 Mbyte/s.
Data trace concept for next generation microcontrollers
The main disadvantage of the Nexus Class 3 solution will be elimi-
nated in next generation microcontrollers, because the pin count
has been reduced from 25 to 5. However, the measurement data
rate and sampling rate will remain at the same unchanged high lev-
el. This data trace solution will also be supported by future proces-
sors from the Infineon and Freescale companies. The raw data
stream von 100 Mbyte/s must still be processed.
Figure 1:
Data flow concept for measurement signals by the RAM copy method and Nexus Class 2+ interface
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Technical Article
May 2012
previous 80 MHz and by a new type of three-line concept, which
permits parallel transmission on two lines.
The greatest improvement to the DAP2 interface is that it now
lets users set up hardware-based data trace filters with extremely
fine granularity. This significantly reduces the transmission of
unnecessary data trace information from the microcontroller to the
POD. Despite the maximum measurement data rate of 10 Mbyte/s,
it is only necessary to process 15 instead of 100 Mbyte/s of raw
data (Figure 3). Due to the considerably reduced requirements for
processing the measurement data, cost-optimized measuring
instrumentation can be used for DAP2.
Summary
Many aspects of modern drive concepts for vehicles with pure or
hybrid electric motors make it necessary to develop new strategies
for measurement data acquisition. Existing measuring instrumen-
tation concepts for internal ECU signals often reach their limits in
terms of data rate or sampling rate. The sampling rates of up to
100 kHz that are necessary for electric drive systems can be imple-
mented for existing and future microcontrollers using the VX1000
measurement and calibration hardware from Vector. Over the
course of this year, new controller generations will be available
from Freescale and Infineon, which can perform their tasks with a
data trace that requires significantly fewer connection pins. In
combination with the high-speed VX1131 measurement module
from Vector which will be available in the second half of 2012
they will enable measurement data rates of 30 Mbyte/s without
CPU loading.
Data trace concept for the current Infineon TriCore
A concept comparable to Nexus Class 3 may also be used for DAP.
This involves reserving a 256 kByte memory range of the ED-RAM
(Emulation Device RAM) for measurement data acquisition. In con-
trast to the 100 MByte/s of the Nexus Class 3 concept, the trace
transmission rate for raw data must be limited to 5 MByte/s; just 4
pins suffice instead of 25 pins. A maximum of four RAM monitoring
windows may be configured. They must be configured so that there
is no overrun of the trace data. Generally, this permits monitoring
of just 1020 kByte of memory instead of 512 kByte and measure-
ment of signals in this memory without processor loading. Signals
outside of these trace monitored memory areas can be measured by
the RAM copy method.
Advantages of the Infineon DAP data trace solution:
> The maximum measurement data rate of 3 Mbyte/s is a factor
of 3 larger than in the RAM copy method.
> The microcontroller is not loaded by the measurement.
> All known PWM drive signals can be measured at a 100 kHz
sampling rate without any problems.
Data trace concept for future Infineon controllers
In the next generation of microcontrollers, Infineon is also offer-
ing the latest generation Device Access Port (DAP). One advantage
lies in its higher raw data transmission rate, which is now 20
MByte/s in contrast to the previous 5 MByte/s. This is attained by
the higher frequency of 160 MHz at the DAP interface instead of the
Figure 2:
Data flow concept of measurement signals by the data trace concept and Nexus Class 3 interface
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Technical Article
May 2012
In the case of Infineon, DAP2 with finely granulated signal fil-
ters in the microcontroller make it possible to reduce the raw data
stream from 100 to 15 Mbyte/s, which permits the use of very cost-
efficient measurement hardware to achieve high data rates. When
used with the ASAM-standardized XCP on Ethernet as the PC inter-
face, the measurement and calibration hardware is also ideal as a
flexible and powerful bypass solution with short latency times.

Translation of a German publication in
Hanser Automotive, 5-6/2012
Links:
Vector's tools for ECU calibration:
www.vector.com/vi_calibration_solutions_en.html
Product information VX1060 Measurement and Calibration Hardware:
www.vector.com/vi_vx1060_en.html
Product information CANape:
www.vector.com/vi_canape_en.html
Figure 3:
In the data trace concept, fine grain filters reduce the raw data stream to 15 Mbyte/s over the DAP2 interface.
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E-Mail Contact
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Alfred Kless
After graduating from the Technical College
of Esslingen with a degree in Electrical Engi-
neering, Alfred Kless initially worked for
ALCATEL where his roles included team leader
for software development and business
development of test systems. Since May
2004, he has been employed at Vector Infor-
matik in Stuttgart as Business Development
Manager for the product lines Measurement
& Calibration and Network Interfaces.