Comparison Of Network Architectures For A Telemetry System In The Solar Car Project

A solar car is an electric vehicle that runs entirely on solar energy. Designing, building and racing solar cars has been a longstanding worldwide challenge for engineering and computer science students, with the overarching goal being to design devices that use sustainable energy sources. This article describes our experience and educational outcomes (the modeling and design of computer-based systems in a way that demonstrates comprehension of the trade-offs involved in design choice) attained while designing the network architecture for a solar car project.The computer science members of the University of Kentucky Solar Car Strategy Team are tasked to reliably collect and analyze car data in real-time, both to assist in the car development process, and then to provide important sensor readings to the driver during racing. The challenges in designing the architecture and protocols for the computer system that supports the solar car are to ensure that: (1) energy consumption is minimal, (2) data collection is reliable, (3) the network system is secure, and (4) the implementation of the system is not overly complex.Our computer system supporting the telemetry tasks uses three micro-controllers to collect and send data over serial communications to a master micro-controller (the Raspberry Pi), that parses and stores data in an on-board database.We compare three protocols: a simple USK-based protocol, and two protocols used in traditional non-solar cars: CAN and Ethernet. We analyze (1) their energy consumption over a period of time, (2) their reliability (by performing stress tests such as disconnecting devices and driving over bumpy terrain), (3) their security (by attempting to compromise the system by remotely sending data over communication lines), and (4) their complexity in terms of time and elThrt for implementation and development.