Along with the trend of smart portable devices, automobile electronics market is now taking a spot besides of smartphone and smart TV. Recently, the majority of people are getting familiar with the term “Smart Car”; user-friendly design that combines automobile with three fields: information, communication and entertainment. In-vehicle infotainment system is now the major trend in automobile electronics product development.
In general, the range of automobile electronics is very voluminous, such as Tire Pressure Monitoring System, Electronic Stability Control, Smart Grid, Electronic Car and In-Vehicle Infotainment. Today we will focus on in-vehicle infotainment system since it relates to end users the most.
In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems and Bluetooth Connectivity
Lately, we can see that some car manufacturers have brought out its own solution, such as Ford and Toyota.
1. Ford SYNC
| * Ford SYNC |
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Ford SYNC platform is a fully integrated in-vehicle communications and entertainment system, which allows users to control their cell phones and MP3 players via wireless connections and voice commands.
2. Toyota Entune
| * Toyota Entune |
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Toyota Entune infotainment system offering Bluetooth is a mobile application which allows users to access five in-car applications from cell phone: Bing, iheartradio, MovieTickets.com, OpenTable and Pandora. Entune provides mobile search, streaming music service, movie ticket and booking dinner reservation. Moreover, passengers can get the latest information, such as sport scores, fuel prices, weather and traffic conditions. The apps can be controlled by using the touch screen or voice commands.
Bluetooth will become one of the top trends in vehicle market because it allows a broad range of electronic devices to connect and communicate with in-vehicle infotainment system, such as mobile phones, MP3 players, PCs and tablets. We can see more companies are responding to customer demand and attaching this technique into product development to support the increasing demand of Bluetooth. The more Bluetooth products are available, the more validations on functionality and reliability are needed.
Case: In-vehicle Infotainment System V.S. Bluetooth Cell Phones
We are taking the condition of Bluetooth cell phones to connect with in-vehicle infotainment as an example. There are several points need to be cared:
First thing is to make sure to pair and connect Bluetooth devices thoroughly, such as the ability to search for other Bluetooth devices or GAP (Generic Access Profile) support.
For safety and convenience, it is common to allow users to import phone contacts into in-vehicle system. To ensure contact information is readable and updated correctly at the same time, we need to pay attention to several points, such as SAP (SIM Access Profile) connection, PBAP (Phone Book Access Profile) and OBEX (Object Push Profile) support.
To ensure in-vehicle system can operate basic phone functions through hands-free kit, such as calling and receiving calls, three-way or multi-way calling, disconnection and reconnection, call transfer and in-call audio quality.
Lately, users are commonly loading different formats of music files from cell phone to car music player, so the performance of audio streaming through Bluetooth plays an important role, such as A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) functions, play/pause/stop/volume/speed functions and the stability of music files.
To ensure the quality of in-vehicle system, the performance test with other competitors’ products cannot be ignored. Thus, different Bluetooth devices of in-vehicle system have its own interoperability with each kind of cell phones under different temperatures, therefore, protential problems could be found under interoperability test.
| Pairing and Connect |
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| Contact information Transfer |
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| Phone Function |
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| Audio Streaming |
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| Performance |
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To make driving experience more enjoyable and convenient, Bluetooth technology is almost a must-have application that is applied to many kinds of in-car devices. With years of research and product test experience, Allion is able to provide test solutions throughout your automobile electronics product development stages.
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