Patent ID: 7346002

Claim:
An electronic control unit of a vehicle comprising: a first control circuit section provided with a program memory including input/output control means and communication control means, an operation processing RAM memory, a microprocessor cooperating with said program memory, and a first series-parallel converter; and a second control circuit section provided with a communication control circuit section for performing communication of a monitoring and control signal, a data memory, and a second series-parallel converter; said first control circuit section and said second control circuit section mutually carrying out serial communication of monitoring signal and control signal via said first and second- series-parallel converters; wherein said first control circuit section comprises regular transmission means and transmission-permitting control signal generation means, and said second control circuit section comprises confirmation reply means, regular report means, and an unprocessed data table; said regular transmission means is means for regularly transmitting a control output data or a constant set data from said first control circuit section to said second control circuit section, and for writing and storing an output and set data having been normally received at said second control circuit section in said data memory; said confirmation reply means is means for executing a confirmation reply of whether said second control circuit section has normally received or failed to receive data to be transmitted from said regular transmission means, and for requesting a retransmission processing from the first control circuit section to the second control circuit section in case of the receiving failure; said regular report means is means for regularly reporting a monitoring input data and status information from said second control circuit section to said first control circuit section, and for storing the-regular report data that said first control circuit section has normally received in said operation processing RAM memory; said unprocessed data table acts as a receiving-side command memory of a first-in first-out structure that is provided in said second control circuit section, and arranged so as to sequentially save a command data for executing said regular report and a command data for executing the confirmation reply, and to sequentially erase said saved command data when transmitting a regular report and confirmation reply data to said first control circuit section; and said transmission-permitting control signal generation means is control signal transmission means from said first control circuit section to said second control circuit section, by which the second control circuit section having received said control signal starts to execute the transmission of the most first-in leading command in said unprocessed data table, and adds the latest monitoring input data and status information thereto and transmits a resulting command in the case where said leading command is the regular report.