Reference Architectures for Automotive Software

The development of the system and software architectures of modern passenger cars is a complex and demanding task, performed by OEMs and countless suppliers. Ever-shorter time-to-market cycles and an increasing number of multimedia features and assistant systems create new challenges in every product cycle. Manifold standards, design approaches, modeling notations, and tools have been developed to tackle these challenges, first and foremost AUTOSAR [8]. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive overview and comparison of historical and current architecture design approaches on the system and software level with their advantages and drawbacks. Relevant process and product standards such as ISO 26262 [33] and Automotive SPICE [60] will be presented and discussed. View-based architecture modeling frameworks have been developed, like AADL [24], the SEI view types [16], and the SPES approach [42, 44], in order to consider the different views and abstraction levels of architecture models, e.g., the system context, the system feature with its data flow, and the mapping to concrete hardware and software solutions. In addition, we discuss the impact of emerging trends such as flexible component deployment, automotive ecosystem infrastructures such as Car2Car and Car2X, and the integration of machine learning components into the architecture design and corresponding design approaches.