Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) driving simulators are valuable tools in assuring efficiency throughout the entire vehicle development and life cycle. Nonetheless, these techniques are accused to prejudice the simulator flexibility with respect to more conventional Model-in-the-Loop techniques.

The vehicle network integration activity required to set off the HiL simulator, known as restbus simulation, is perceived as the main source of these perplexities. All vehicle signals to be emulated, defining the interface between real and simulated world, represents a pivotal point in simulator contexts and should be addressed methodically from the start, prior to every other decisional process, since they affect simulator architecture possibilities and limitations.

The present article proposes a method to evaluate an integration task and synthetize key aspects of the vehicle communication network, supporting both high and low-level decisions in software, model and validation plans development. Thanks to the abstraction of the communication protocol formalism, integration activities can be conformed at a level of detail suitable for typical simulator engineers’ educational backgrounds, reducing working effort, time and expertise required to update any driving simulator to specific HiL setups.

The entire method is presented and discussed; electing an application case, the value of the approach is highlighted and the reasoning for its outputs is explained both practically and conceptually. Advantages and limitations of the proposed approaches are hence discussed emphasizing its effects on numerical model development, programming activities and operational workflow rationalisation.