engineering, AUTOSAR - Automotive Industries

MOST –
connecting all five
major fields By: Lenny Case
innovation
In-vehicle use of the MOST standard is reaching critical
mass, with over 100 models on the road fitted with MOST
technology. The newest standard, MOST150, meets the requirements
not only for the traditional areas of entertainment
and information, but also for the new domains of mobile
connectivity, connected services and driver assistance
– meeting the needs of the five major areas of in-car use.
“Today, MOST150 offers the technology and the audio/video
capability for next generation automotive infotainment
features and devices as well as new features like
Internet access devices, video processing units,
and many more. The MOST150 Technology is
ready for production and various car makers
have already started implementing MOST
Technology in their first series projects,
Christian Thiel, spokesperson
for the MOST Cooperation
including Audi and Daimler,” said Christian
Thiel, spokesperson for the MOST
Cooperation in an earlier interview to AI.
The MOST Cooperation was founded
in 1998 to standardize MOST Technology as
a global standard for multimedia networking and
now consists of 16 international vehicle manufacturers
and more than 60 key component suppliers. Audi, BMW, Daimler,
HARMAN and SMSC are its core partners and constitute its
steering committee. It’s success also rides on its associate partners
such as GM, the Hyundai Kia Automotive Group, the Toyota Motor
Corporation, the PSA Group, the Ford Motor Company and Alpine.
Automotive Industries (AI) asked Thiel what the goals of
the November conference in Korea were.
thiel: MOST Cooperation’s Interconnectivity Conference Asia in
South Korea was designed to demonstrate to the Asian automotive
industry that MOST Technology is ready for extended multimedia
and information applications in the vehicle. MOST150 now serves
the five major fields of in-car use by meeting the requirements for
the traditional areas of entertainment and information as well as the
emerging domains of mobile connectivity, connected services and
driver assistance. In the accompanying exhibition, MOST showed
that it supports star, daisy-chain, tree and other topologies, as well
as different physical layers: plastic optical fibers (POF), COAX based
electrical physical layer as well as shielded (STP) and unshielded
twisted pair (UTP) of copper wires. MOST150 also represents a
physical layer for Ethernet with its new Ethernet channel that runs
parallel with all other communication channels provided by MOST.
The Ethernet channel transmits unmodified Ethernet
frames so that software stacks and applications from
the consumer and IT domains can be seamlessly
integrated into automobiles. TCP/IP stacks and
other Ethernet protocols can communicate
over MOST without any changes.
AI: To what extent are MOST standards
globally accepted?
thiel: With the acceptance of
MOST Technology reaching 100 car
models on the road today, MOST has
become a worldwide de facto standard
of the automotive industry. After its initial
start in Europe nine years ago, Asian
carmakers presented their first vehicles
with MOST in 2007 and today there are
over 20 models manufactured by Asian
automakers with MOST built in.
Since MOST Technology is designed to be environmentally
sustainable with reduced weight and electromagnetic
interference, it has been adopted in more than ten hybrid
vehicles to date. The plastic optical fiber (POF) chosen ten years
ago suits the requirements of hybrid and electrical power trains very
well. The use of MOST Technology is expanding rapidly from the
premium range to the high-volume, medium-sized vehicle market
worldwide. Currently, MOST is adopted in approximately 12% of
vehicles manufactured worldwide. Its traditional and new adopters
represent almost 50% of current global light vehicle production.
AI: How would you rate the success of MOST150 and why?
thiel: Adoption of automotive infrastructure technologies takes
many years. For example, it has taken CAN about 20 years to find its
way in nearly all cars produced worldwide. The key success factor is
that MOST has been developed and optimized for the car industry.
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