Ethernet Network Test Bench

The Ethernet Network Test Bench from Technica Engineering is a hardware test bench that is used by our engineers to validate the overall Ethernet communication between ECUs on a system test level with the goal to provide a deep test coverage using automated scripts.

Focusing on different phases of the communication (lifecycle, statup – midphase – shutdown), its main objectives are to control the quality of the protocols implemented in the ECUs and detecting errors in the tracked communication already from an early phase of development.

This test bench includes our Capture Modules, which are the key hardware for capturing the traffic from the ECUs. Our ANDi Observer software is used for automated trace analysis tasks, as it allows to use test modules for integration testing. The Capture Modules allow to link the Bus ID and highly precise hardware timestamps, which are directly accessible from the header of messages. Packet counters help to identify missing or dropped packets from traces, while the temperature and voltage of the ECUs and Capture Modules can be checked simultaneously in periodically recurring meta data. Besides Automotive Ethernet, this test bench can log CAN, FlexRay and LIN busses within the same setup with the same concept, as all bus traffic is encapsulated via the TECMP protocol and provided to a test PC over an Ethernet uplink. The system provides periodically recurring information for test automation to solve debugging issues in traces.

Further, our Ethernet Network Test Bench validates the OEM interface description at different phases (lifecycle) of the vehicle through the application of different tests for each phase. It can be used to test the SOME/IP and SOME/IP-SD protocols and OEM message database (FIBEX, ARXML). Further it can be used for diagnostics tests, UDP-NM tests, switch tests and further test scenarios related to the system testing of a network that includes Automotive Ethernet.