In-vehicle Ethernet is a new type of local area network technology that uses Ethernet to connect in-vehicle electronic control units (ECUs). Unlike ordinary Ethernet technology that uses 4 pairs of unshielded twisted pair cables to transmit data, automotive Ethernet can achieve a data transmission rate of 100 Mb/s or even 1 Gb/s on a single unshielded twisted pair cable. Compared with ordinary Ethernet, it is more adaptable to the vehicle environment and meets the requirements of the automotive industry for high reliability, low electromagnetic radiation, low power consumption, bandwidth allocation, low latency, and synchronous real-time performance.
The vehicle Ethernet protocol architecture corresponds to the OSI reference model, which is mainly divided into physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, and application layer, each of which has its own function.