About the Customer:
Our customer is a trusted Tier-1 supplier of connected vehicle products that are benchmarked against superior quality standards, for commercial vehicles.
Business challenge:
The customer desired to develop a high-end telematics control unit that has two devices internally:
- A processor that runs on Linux platform
- A secondary controller that runs on FreeRTOS embedded platform
Embitel’s Unique Value Proposition:
Our experience of more than 15 years in connected vehicle product engineering services and illustrious track record compelled the customer to approach us with this challenging project.
We were able to mitigate several striking technology challenges that cropped up during the design/development phase of the project:
- The processor of the device was based on the latest chipset from NXP, i.e., the i.MX 8M Nano. This project marked the first time we used this specific chipset design and delivered a successful Proof of Concept. This also makes us one of the few product engineering service providers in the market today having experience with this chipset.
- The project also required the design and development of a SOM board, which is essentially a miniature module within the large circuit. The SOM board also had an irreversible design, i.e., with a child card that serves as an exchangeable component. In addition to the SOM board, the product also included a carrier board. The processor that works on Linux platform is on the SOM board and the microcontroller that runs on FreeRTOS is on the carrier board. These two boards had to communicate with each other through Inter Processor Communication (IPC). This IPC included signal exchange and data exchange. For data exchange it was necessary to have a Hardware Secure Module (HSM) between the processor and the controller.
- The Hardware Security Module accomplishes Secure Interprocessor Communication, with two configurations for secure boot and secure IPC. The protocols used to communicate with the processor and the controller are also different. Moreover, the encryption-decryption algorithm that was integrated with this module provides it a superior level of IoT security and resilience from hacking.
- This was also the first project in which we introduced an eSIM.
- Our design was compatible with the end-to-end IoT architecture that the customer was developing.
Software Features of the Telematics Solution
- The device included a FOTA update module and was connected to the cloud.
- The project also demanded the compliance to AIS 140 standards for commercial vehicles. SOS/emergency button was integrated with the product. On pressing the emergency button, a message will be sent to a preconfigured list of numbers. So, every contact receiving that message will be alerted of the emergency and will also receive the GPS location of the vehicle.
- Communication was established with two other servers through the cloud, as per the business requirement. The communication protocol for one of the servers was MQTT, while HTTP protocol was used to communicate with the second server.
Tools and Technologies:
- BUSMASTER and PCAN-View to simulate and analyse CAN data.
- Development on Linux OS and FreeRTOS environments
