Patent ID: 8918260

Claim:
A vehicle-supported data processing system, comprising: processing units communicating with one another via a bus system, which are powered by respectively at least one of at least two different vehicle electrical systems; transmitter units for control information; and receiver units for the control information being among the processing units; wherein: the bus system is a reconfigurable ring bus, in which each processing unit is connected to at least two adjacent processing units by respectively one bus segment, the ring bus is divided into a plurality of sections, each section including a plurality of connected processing units, and each processing unit in any particular section being powered by the same vehicle electrical system, the ring bus includes a plurality of potential separating devices, each of which is located in a bus segment that connects two processing units powered by different ones of the at least two different vehicle electrical systems, thereby forming the plurality of sections, the number of sections is less than the number of processing units, and the potential separating devices reconfigure the ring bus by combining sections in which the processing units are powered by the same vehicle electrical system to form a new ring bus, and wherein a failure of one of the processing units or its vehicle electrical system only results in an interruption of the communication via the failed processing unit or the processing units powered by the failed vehicle electrical system, so that processing units powered by another one of the vehicle electrical systems, more than one of which lie on the same section, are not affected by the interruption.