Abstract
M.Ing. (Electrical And Electronic Engineering)
In-vehicle Power Line Communication (PLC) is an emerging technology that can easily
bene t the automotive industry by reducing the amount of wires (and hence cost, weight
and complexity) for vehicle wire harnesses. The reduction in weight would also lead to
less fuel consumption.
This dissertation aims at taking the research of this technology a step towards fully
understanding the vehicle's power line as a communication medium.
We investigate the bit error characteristics of a readily available transceiver on the
vehicle's power bus. To do so, we develop and perform bit error recording over the
medium to get experimental results with the battery line under di ferent operating
conditions.
Using the rst set of these results, we parametrise di erent kinds of Markov models to
see which one simulates the channel best. Using the preferred model, we then model the
rest of the sets of results so that we can simulate the channel's bit error characteristics
under these di erent conditions.
Using these models, we demonstrate how these simulations can be used to evaluate the
performance of di erent error detection and correction techniques. In particular, we
evaluate the error detection mechanisms used in the popular in-vehicle Local Intercon-
nect Network (LIN) protocol, in addition to some simple error correction techniques.