Abnormal Position Identification Technique for Communication Channels Using Adaptive DFE

In today's advancing era of autonomous driving, invehicle systems have to perform self-diagnosis and maintenance to operate vehicles for longer periods. Since In-vehicle communication channels are longer than ten meters, the problem of the maintenance is that the replacement of components takes time and costly. Diagnosing abnormal locations in communication channels is required to operate maintenances efficiently. In this paper, we demonstrated that abnormal locations of communication channels can be identified by using tap coefficients of an adaptive decision feedback equalizer (DFE). Considering DFE with over 100 taps is unrealistic, we convolute the data on DFE tap coefficients obtained at various transmission start times, which results in pulse response with a peak at the abnormal location. In this approach, we achieved abnormal location diagnosis with a resolution of 0.2 m by using five taps of DFE in bidirectional communication at 1 Gbps. This enables the replacement of only the faulty components at the maintenance of communication channels.