Body control modules

Overview

The Body Control Module (BCM) is an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) specialized for the vehicle body functions, e.g. exterior and interior lighting, car access/ central locking, immobilizer, front and rear wiper, air conditioning, window lift, seat comfort including control and monitoring of subsequent ECUs like LED, HVAC, Seat, Door, Roof Modules, among others. Because of the diversity of its functions, the requirements for a BCM has evolved over the past years and represents quite a challenge. For this reason, Infineon has developed many solutions to face those challenges.

As more and more functions have come to the vehicle body, the BCM complexity for supply, communication, sense, control, and actuation has been continuously increasing. To keep this complexity manageable in terms of space on the PCB but also in terms of power dissipated, the integration of functions became a key factor for the design.

Infineon includes many product families that offer a high integration:

SBC (System Basis Chip) which gathers in one product a system supply (LDO, DCDC), a communication interface, diagnosis, switching function and fail output.
SPOC™+2 High-Side multichannel SPI Power Controller, that enables to drive up to 6 loads.
LITIX™ the best-LED Driver IC to benefit from the advantages of LEDs while providing full protection to your application.
SPIDER, high-integrated multichannel SPI driver for small current loads.
NovalithIC™ low ohmic protected single half-bridge.

Products

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Not only the body functions (interior lighting, seat heating, seat movement…) have increased, but also their variants: alone for the seat movement we can lift high or low, slide forwards or backward, recline forwards or backward, without forgetting the lumbar support and headrest lift functions. Therefore, the scalability of product families has become necessary for a BCM platform to guarantee certain flexibility throughout the designing process. Infineon’s Power Switch IC, PROFET™ has the most scalable portfolio of high side switches in the market.

In addition, the BCM is an essential part of the In-Vehicle Network (IVN) and depending on the Gateway communication, it will be connected via LIN, CAN or Ethernet. Thanks to AURIX™ multicore, it is now possible to integrate two applications in one device: BCM and Gateway, together with a selection of advanced security features like Infineon’s PRO-SIL™ and embedded Hardware Security Module (HSM).
Last but not least, the BCM requires a very low quiescent current, perfectly supported by the SBC integrated low quiescent current mode.

Regarding the design, Body Control Module systems require:

A supply and communication interface which can be built discrete (voltage regulator + LIN/ CAN transceiver) or integrated (SBC)
A µC capability fitting to the system requirements from low-cost BCM up to Gateway integrated BCM with advanced security features
A set of scalable single- and multi-channel High-Side and Low-Side Switches with sense, diagnose and protection functions
A set of scalable LED Driver ICs and Single Half-Bridges with sense, diagnose and protection functions
A set of scalable Transmitter and Receiver ICs for Wireless Control, e.g. RKE (Remote Keyless Entry) or PKE (Passive Key Entry)
A safety concept to handle under- and over-voltage, short circuit, over-load, over-temperature, open load, wire harness protection, load protection, power supply protection, ASIL decomposition and many more depending on the system requirements