Patent ID: 11863468
Assignee: MARVELL ASIA PTE LTD
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. An in-vehicle Ethernet communication system, comprising:
a first Ethernet Physical layer (PHY) device comprising (i) a first interface configured to connect to a first system controller and (ii) a first General-Purpose Input-Output (GPIO) port that is separate from the first interface, the first GPIO port configured to connect to a first safety controller; and
a second Ethernet PHY device comprising (i) a second interface configured to connect to a second system controller and (ii) a second GPIO port that is separate from the second interface, the second GPIO port configured to connect to a second safety controller,
the first and second Ethernet PHY devices being configured to:
transfer data between the first and second system controllers by (i) communicating with the first and second system controllers via the first and second interfaces and (ii) transmitting and receiving, over a physical Ethernet link between the first and second Ethernet PHY devices, layer-1 Ethernet frames that carry the data; and
transfer safety messages between the first and second safety controllers, over the same physical Ethernet link and independently of the first and second system controllers, by (i) communicating with the first and second safety controllers via the first and second GPIO ports, and (ii) transferring, over the physical Ethernet link, Ethernet Operations Administration and Maintenance (OAM) frames that are interleaved among the layer-1 Ethernet frames and that carry the safety messages.