This masters thesis is based on work performed at Volvo Car Corporation in Gothenburg, division for electronics.
The thesis presents the special requirements for an operating system supporting a driver information system. A driver information system provides the driver with functionality to control several devices: CD player, radio, navigational units etc., using speech control.
It was found that the most important requirements are:
Limited space and production budget require efficient memory management.
Limited power supply requires sophisticated power management.
Limited interaction possibilities require support for advanced and adjusted
interaction channels.
High safety and reliability requires real-time performance.
The thesis further evaluates the fulfilment of these requirements by three different operating systems, QNX Neutrino, EPOC and Windows CE 3.0, all small enough for being a candidate in this context. Windows CE 3.0 is studied and tested in more detail.
The results of the evaluation and testing are:
None of the three operating systems fulfil the requirements to be a real-time operating system. According to the vendors information QNX Neutrino and Windows CE 3.0 seem to fulfil the real-time requirements equally well. However, tests of Windows CE 3.0 disclose some significant shortcomings
On the other hand, Windows CE is the operating system which provides most support for other in-car requirements, e.g. multiple useful device drivers. QNX Neutrino and EPOC have better support in their architecture for safe management and sharing of memory for computational processes.