Microcontroller Adaptation within the Telematics Domain

Abstract

The ever-growing field of telematics spans over a wide array of heterogeneous peripherals such as GPS units, accelerometers, alarms and smart cards. Gathering, handling and storing data or transmitting it to a server over the air introduces demands on adaptability, robustness and configurability of the central unit being used. The MX-3 telematics platform series developed by Host Mobility AB has proven to meet the functional demands placed upon it but features an unnecessary burden in the form of a heavy and expensive GPRS modem running the customer application using Java ME (Micro Edition) besides the C- avoured core functionality of the contained PIC microprocessor. This project aims to improve the robustness, energy and cost efficiency of the system by moving all of the custom application code to the microprocessor, eliminating the need for an expensive modem able to support Java. Challenges to be faced include creating a complete and robust C code base as well as identifying demands on the microcontroller and modem in the new setup and matching them with appropriate hardware. During this project we have made appropriate hardware changes as well as adapted and augmented the former code base in order to develop a prototype for a new telematics platform series based on the MX-3 called the MX Mini. The results section of this paper presents the achieved architectural improvements and projected production cost savings.