Review of In-Vehicle Optical Fiber Communication Technology

With the continuous development of automotive intelligent networking and autonomous driving technologies, the number of in-vehicle electronic systems and applications is increasing rapidly. This change increases the amount of data to be transmitted in the vehicle and puts forward further requirements of higher speed and safety for in-vehicle communication. Traditional vehicle bus technologies are no longer sufficient to meet today’s high-speed transmission requirements, in which copper cables are used extensively, resulting in serious electromagnetic interference (EMI). Vehicle optical fiber communication technology, besides greatly improving the data transmission rate, has the advantages of anti-EMI, reducing cable space and vehicle mass. This paper first presents the motivation of applying vehicle optical fiber communication technology and reviews the development history of vehicle optical fiber communication technology. Then, the paper researches the development trend of automotive electrical and electronic architecture (EEA), from distributed EEA to domain centralized EEA and zone-oriented EEA. Based on the discussion of the development trend of automotive EEA, an EEA based on vehicle optical fiber communication technology is proposed. Finally, the key points and future directions of vehicle optical fiber communication technology research are highlighted, including vehicle multi-mode optical fiber technology, vehicle optical fiber network protocol, and topology.