Electronic Control Unit for an Adaptive Cruise

Control System & Engine Management System in a

Vehicle using Electronic Fuel Injection
E Vargil Vijay Vargil Kumar E
Gudlavalleru Engineering College, Gudlavalleru Engineering College,
Gudlavalleru,A.P, India. Gudlavalleru,A.P, India.
[email protected] [email protected]

Ch V Rama Rao G N Swamy

Gudlavalleru Engineering College, Gudlavalleru Engineering College,
Gudlavalleru,A.P, India. Gudlavalleru,A.P, India.
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— This paper is about simulation design of an Electronic the distance and speed of preceding moving vehicles.Engine
Control Unit (ECU) for an adaptive cruise control (ACC) and for Management System regulates fuel and air intake to achieve
an engine management system (EMS). The simulation model desired performance in the form of torque or power output.
allows processing of various sensors data like engine speed, Important feature of electronic engine control is its ability to
engine temperature, and distance from the front vehicle. By improve fuel economy.
collecting data from various sensors, ECU controls the vehicle
speed by using electronic fuel injector actuator. ECU model The electronic engine control system receives input
simulates the failures to design a fault-tolerant system and electrical signals from the various sensors that measure the
controls the engine speed with the aid of an open loop control state of the engine. From these signals, the controller generates
technique using EMS. ECU provides safety to the user by output electrical signals to the actuators that determine the
avoiding the collision by using IR Sensor and deployment of the engine calibration (i.e., correct fuel delivery). Using this
air bags using MEMS accelerometer in the case of emergency measurement or estimate, the quantity of fuel to be delivered is
using Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC). ECU mainly concentrates determined by the controller in accordance with the
on functionality of fuel metering.This Simulation model could be instantaneous control mode. The quantity of fuel delivered by
used as a tool for swift development and test models of ECU in the fuel injector is determined by the operation of the
order to control the engine in laboratory for fuel economy and Electronic fuel injector. Electronic Fuel injector is essentially a
engine performance and safety improvement purposes for solenoid-operated valve
vehicles. The simulation has been realized using Simulink and
Stateflow, which are components of Mathworks’ MATLAB
software.
II. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MODEL
A. Adaptive Cruise Control
Keywords- Electronic Control Unit (ECU); Engine
Management System (EMS); Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC); IR sensor measures the distance of the front vehicle from
Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI); the user’s vehicle. IR sensor used in this paper measures the
maximum distance of 120m. If the fore going vehicle comes in
I. INTRODUCTION the vicinity of the IR sensor range then it measures the distance
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) refers to extension of and it gives the corresponding distance data to the Engine
conventional cruise control to a higher level of sensors and Control Unit. Then E.C.U. takes the decision based on the
control, including detection of vehicles in front of the equipped distance gap and proportional motion of the front vehicle.
car, and distance regulation with the relevant targets. It first CONTROL ALGORITHM
was called ICC (intelligent cruise control) or AICC
(autonomous intelligent cruise control).The driver can select a Control algorithm is designed to maintain the desired
cruising speed by means of buttons on the steering wheel. If a distance with the preceding vehicle. If no car is detected in
vehicle is detected by the range sensor in the same lane as the front of equipped vehicle, a cruise control strategy is used to
ACC vehicle the car will slow down to the same speed and at a maintain the driver’s desired speed.
convenient distance from the vehicle in front. If the driver 1) If a car is detected, control law determines a desired
decides to overtake, the car will accelerate to the cruising speed
method to track distance set-up.
as soon as the sensor no longer detects the preceding vehicle.
The sensor is mounted in front of the car and monitors the 2) Controller uses available actuator (electronic fuel
situation (it can be seen as the eyes of the system), calculating injector) to obtain this operation.

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3) To ensure safe actuation of electronic fuel injection, a each fuel injector. Increasing this duration causes more fuel to
switching logic must be included (like Stateflow). be delivered, thereby causing the mixture to become richer.
The sensor is mounted in front of the car, and Correspondingly, decreasing this duration causes the mixture to
monitors the situation (it can be seen as the eyes of the system), become leaner.
calculating the distance and speed of preceding moving
vehicles. Finally the adapted automatic action is commanded to
the electronic fuel injector pulse width signal, then to the
electronic fuel injector.The inputs to the ECU are IR Sensor
signal & Mems based accelerometer signal. By using IR sensor
data, front vehicle speed and distance between the user’s
vehicle and front vehicle are measured. If the distance between
the vehicles is reducing then ECU gives correction signal to the
pulse width signal. Then the fuel flow into the vehicle is
reduced. If the user’s vehicle goes very nearer to the front
vehicle then vehicle speed is further reduced. If a crash
happens in any case then vehicle will be stopped by stopping
the functioning of electronic fuel injector and airbags are
deployed for the safety of the user. Thus the ECU improves the
safety to the users. Secondly the user can set the speed using
the button on the steering, and then vehicle goes with the
desired speed. If a front vehicle is detected then the vehicle
speed is reduced by using above control algorithm. The flow
chart below gives an idea of ACC working.
Figure 2. ECU Block diagram

III. DESIGN METHODOLOGY

The functions filled by the ECU developed for EMS in this
paper are:
Basic pulse width calculation depending on throttle
plate angle and engine speed
Pulse width refinement depending on the coolant
circuit temperature
Pulse width refinement depending on the ambient
air temperature
Closed-loop control of the engine based on feedback
from the EGO sensor[6]
Trigger of evaporative emission control system
(canister)
Figure 1 ACC Flow Chart Trigger of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system
Injection to be held under specific circumstances
B. Engine management system
The capacities offered by electronic control are the pulse The ECU depends on many different sensors, all of them
duration can be refined, in function of various parameters, in being potential subjects to a failure. So the ECU has to be able
order to improve the engine’s performances and its gas to deal with those failures and, depending on their gravity, stop
emissions.The electronic engine control system receives input the engine, or make some refinements on the EFI. The
electrical signals from the various sensors that measure the functions filled by fault-tolerant ECU are as follows:
state of the engine. From these signals, the controller generates Deactivation of the closed-loop control in case of absent or
output electrical signals to the actuators that determine the incorrect signal of the EGO Deactivation of the EGR system in
engine calibration (i.e., correct fuel delivery). case of EGR sensor failure.Critical sensors are speed sensor
and throttle sensor. Replacement by default values of faulty
The configuration and control for an automotive engine signals incoming from temperature sensors (coolant and
control system are determined in part by the set of sensors that ambient air). Coeff. = −0.005 Tair+1.1 In case of quick throttle
is available to measure the variables. The primary function of release, if a negative variation of the throttle plate angle should
this fuel control system is to accurately determine the mass air exceed a threshold of 20°/second, then a cutoff would be
flow rate into the engine. Then the control system precisely applied as long as the variation did not go below this threshold
regulates fuel delivery such that the ratio of the mass of air to [1].To prevent damage to the engine, the ECU can limit the
the mass of fuel in each cylinder is as close as possible to speed of the engine by closing the injectors if this speed
stoichiometric i.e., 14.7.The electronic fuel controller changes exceeds a threshold. In the implementation of ECU set this
the mixture by changing the duration of the actuating signal to threshold to 6000 RPM [1].The aim of these two operations is

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to increase engine power under strong acceleration by width signal output is given to electronic fuel injector. Either to
enriching the fuel/air mixture of the engine[1].In this model, to activate or deactivate acc, input signal taken from switch
activate the EGR system, with a fixed frequency of 300Hz for button.
the valve opening, whenever the engine exceeds the speed of
3500 RPM and the coolant temperature exceeds 70°C[1].In this
block, it has been decided to deactivate the closed loop system
whenever the variation of the injection duration from the
lookup would exceed 0.1 millisecond per second [1].
In the design of Simulink model of ACC distance from the
front vehicle is obtained from the IR sensor using dist_fv
variable and corresponding relative speed is calculated from
the speed_fv. Driver can choose to use the ACC or at any time
if he wants to deactivate the ACC and to move forward he can
make the acc_system button zero. The driver can select a Figure 3: Simulink model of ACC System
cruising speed by means of buttons on the steering wheel.
Then, if the driver releases his foot from the accelerator pedal,
the car will automatically travel at the desired speed. In the
Simulink model cruising input signal is placed. Driver can
switch it on and he can move with cruising speed.ACC output
is given to Engine Model block in Matlab[9].The ACC
function is only active at a speed of more than around 40 km/h.
A lower speed limit is introduced for safety reasons to prohibit
an automatic acceleration at low speed. This should avoid a
dangerous approach to an obstacle that is outside of the lateral
sensor range, but well inside the trajectory of the vehicle. This
case is typical for crossing pedestrians in urban areas or Figure 4: Stateflow model of an acc system
nonaligned cars in traffic jams. Above this speed of 40 km/h
the system reacts on moving vehicles only (not the stopped
ones)[2]. In the figure 4 Stateflow model has been shown. Stateflow
charts enable the graphical representation of hierarchical and
A. BASIC PULSEWIDTH CALCULATION:
parallel states and the event-driven transitions between
them[5][7].
C. ENGINE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
The Figure represents the simulation diagram of ECU for
Engine Management System. Inputs to the engine management
Simulink block are sensor signals and the refined pulse width
signal is given to fuel injector.

Table 1. Lookup table for PW calculation

The table.1 represents basic pulse width (milliseconds)

with respect to speed (r.p.m.) and throttle (deg.)[3][4]

B. ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL SIMULINK

MODEL
In the Simulink model if the speed_fv calculated is
less than 40km/h then the vehicle will stop by making the pulse
width signal to zero. And if any time crash happens with higher Figure 5: ECU for EMS Simulink model
deceleration the airbags will be deployed. And if the front
vehicle is coming very nearer then belt tightening signal is
given to belt tightening system and an alert signal is given to This Figure represents the Stateflow subsystem. In this
the driver.The Figure 3 represents the adaptive cruise control Stateflow block for each sensor input signal corresponding
Simulink model. In this model the inputs are taken from IR output signal is generated using control logic. Each sub block
sensor, Mems accelerometer (for crash sensing). And the pulse corresponds to each sensor signal.

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Fig 9: ACC Output When front vehicle is coming very very nearer to
the users vehicle.

Figure 6: ECU for EMS Stateflow model

D. ECU FOR ENGINE MANAGEMENT AND OCCUPANT

SAFETY USING ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL
The Figure 7 represents the ECU Simulink model for both
Adaptive cruise control and engine management systems. And Fig 10. Maximum speed graph for EMS
the refined pulse width signal output is generated. This ECU
implemented below does both ACC and Engine Management
actions. It takes both input sensor signal from engine V. CONCLUSION
management and ACC sensors and generates refined pulse
width signal to increase the occupant safety and for better The development of simulation based computer model of
engine performance. ECU is, very time and cost-effective in the occupant Safety
development systems & Engine management System. The
input signals of this ECU program model are generated by
simulation. This paper simulation can be considered as a good
tool to simulate an ECU, to control the fuel metering of an
injection system. This paper proves that ECU works better for
occupant safety system using ACC.
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Fig 8: Adaptive Cruise Control Speed Output

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