Stack continues to support new energy vehicle power innovation, Tektronix participates in ATC Automotive Test Technology Week

Shanghai, China, March 27, 2024 - The third Automotive Test Technology Week was held in Shanghai from March 21 to 22, 2024. Tektronix, a leading provider of test and measurement solutions, participated in the event with its full-stack test solutions for new energy vehicles. As a trusted test and measurement expert in the automotive industry, Tektronix provides full-stack test solutions for the new energy vehicle industry, helping the industry cope with technological innovation under the wave of AI from initial device selection to final product certification.

ATC Automotive Technology Platform is a comprehensive platform that provides professional technical exchanges, skills training, and business services for Chinese automotive technicians. Its customer base covers all OEMs and thousands of auto parts manufacturers. It is an influential brand for domestic automotive technology conferences and activities. This Automotive Testing Technology Week is a testing feast that fully showcases various technologies and services for vehicle and parts development, covering hot topics in the industry such as automotive software and hardware system testing, new energy power system testing, reliability design and testing, Ethernet development and testing, etc.

As a special guest, Yu Yang, Technical Manager of East China Region of Tektronix, participated in the roundtable discussion on "Security and Future of Ethernet" and conducted in-depth discussions and analysis on the following two issues.

Security of Automotive Ethernet

The advantages of automotive Ethernet are its low latency and high throughput, which establishes a high-speed data channel between sensors and processors. However, compared with traditional Ethernet, automotive Ethernet has more challenges.

Shielding requirements become higher

In-vehicle Ethernet requires the use of only one pair of twisted-pair cables in the limited space inside the vehicle to achieve information transmission between up to dozens of ECUs/DCUs. As a result, the electromagnetic interference in the environment is very complex and the signal is particularly susceptible to interference, so shielding is even more important.

Higher data rates

In just a few years, 100M and 1000M automotive Ethernet have been deployed in some models, and some companies are developing 2.5G/5G/10G products. Taking the current mainstream 1000M automotive Ethernet as an example, its symbol rate is as high as 750M symbol/s, which is 6 times that of traditional Ethernet.

The full-duplex working mode and PAM4/PAM5 debugging method make it difficult to debug interoperability issues.

In-vehicle Ethernet works in full-duplex mode, and the signals sent and received by each terminal are transmitted on the same pair of twisted pairs. The signals overlap, and it is impossible to distinguish the signal type during debugging, making debugging difficult.

Tektronix oscilloscopes have a solution for automotive Ethernet that uses voltage and current probes plus patented algorithms to separate uplink and downlink data without disrupting the connectivity of the vehicle network. This makes it easy to find the root cause of the problem.

Fiber optic communication is the future trend of automotive Ethernet

There is no doubt that fiber-optic communication will become the future development trend of automotive Ethernet. As people's requirements for intelligent driving become higher and higher, they not only pursue higher intelligence and safety, but also require automotive Ethernet to provide greater data throughput. Compared with electrical signal transmission, fiber-optic transmission has advantages such as higher bandwidth, stronger anti-interference ability, and lighter weight, which are very attractive for new energy vehicles. However, its disadvantages are also obvious, namely, higher hardware cost, higher power consumption, and higher latency than electrical signals when transmitting over short distances.

The choice between light and electricity is actually a trade-off between cost performance. For components with high data throughput requirements and relatively long transmission distances, optical fiber transmission is the first choice; for other components, more economical and affordable electrical signal transmission can be selected. It is reported that PON chip products for optical transmission have been launched in China, and their application in the field of new energy vehicles is mainly positioned in the transmission of camera videos for intelligent driving.