An Approach for Automotive ECU Diagnosis via Ethernet Snooping & Microcontroller Tracing

The increasing software complexity in modern vehicles necessitates diagnostic capabilities beyond traditional systems. This paper presents a Diagnosis Unit (DU) that supports runtime detection and analysis of anomalies by correlating irregularities in Ethernet communication with ECU-internal processing behavior. The DU captures execution traces upon detecting anomalous communication and performs localized analysis to assist in uncovering potential root causes. Implemented on a ZCU102 platform and interfaced with Aurix ECUs, the prototype effectively detects both communication and processing anomalies with minimal impact on in-vehicle network bandwidth, supporting scalable, adaptive, and non-intrusive in-vehicle diagnostics.