Stepping Toward Zenoh Protocol in Automotive Scenarios

As automotive systems evolve toward zonal and software-defined architectures, identifying communication protocols that are efficient and easily adaptable in diverse scenarios has become increasingly important. In this context, case study based validation plays a crucial role in determining whether a middleware solution is suitable for real-world automotive integration. The rigidity and slow pace in the automotive related protocol evolution and acceptance cause large gaps comparing to other industries and few available solutions as technology enablers, although the stringent necessities are obvious in the context of growing interoperability requirements. The current work, as the first step in a broader research direction, investigates Zenoh, a lightweight and modern data centric protocol developed from the ground up using current networking paradigms. Zenoh is implemented and evaluated in a representative automotive scenario that involves distributed zone controllers and an in-vehicle server, scenario based research being essential for solution tailoring and proper validation. To provide meaningful context for the research, Data Distribution Service (DDS) is used as a benchmark, a protocol that has consistently demonstrated strong performance in previous automotive research. The experimental results highlight Zenoh protocol advantages in message delivery integrity and resource efficiency, especially in scenarios with high data transmission frequency. Unlike traditional middleware, Zenoh shows promising adaptability in distributed environments with limited computational resources. The findings confirm that Zenoh is a viable candidate for next generation in-vehicle communication systems.