Development of Advanced OTA Update Pipeline for a Leading Automotive OEM

About the Customer

Our customer is a leading automotive OEM delivering mobility solutions in the two-wheeler domain for B2C and B2B (fleet management) segments in the global market. With an ambitious long-term vision to develop software-defined vehicles, the OEM had already initiated efforts to reduce reliance on third-party suppliers across critical vehicle subsystems.

Telematics control unit, the gateway device to unlock a key SDV characteristic – Over-the-Air (OTA) updates, became a strategic priority for in-house development.

Business Challenge

Two interconnected challenges – Vehicle Telematics and OTA updates drove the OEM to seek Embitel’s support.

1. The OEM had observed field issues with the third-party vendor’s telematics device and could not get these resolved despite multiple interventions. The customer had no visibility into the vendor’s proprietary stack and hence could not access the internals or control.
2. The existing OTA architecture could not uniformly handle OTA campaigns across multiple vehicle platforms or multiple ECU types within the same vehicle.
3. Network disruptions meant neither the user, field engineer nor the maintenance team knew the state of the OTA update.
4. The existing system had no mechanism in place to detect or authenticate and re-onboard a replacement ECU remotely, this led to potential security vulnerabilities.
5. The architecture lacked the capability to predict the health of vehicle components and generated no insights for maintenance teams.

Embitel's Solution

Embitel’s IoT team played the critical role in development of the telematics & OTA solutions by closely collaborating with the OEM’s in-house teams.

To identify the technical gaps in the existing OTA architecture, we conducted multiple workshops with relevant stakeholders and created multiple flow charts to break down the existing workflow.

This led to us identifying 80+ gaps.

Here are some of the standout implementations:

• Standardized, Platform-Agnostic OTA Update Pipeline

We developed an OTA update architecture protected by mechanisms for secure FOTA/SOTA updates. The OTA update architecture could seamlessly integrate OTA client (OTAC) embedded in the telematics device to manage OTA update delivery to any ECU irrespective of the vehicle platform.

The telematics device now acts as the OTA coordinator for all ECUs in the vehicle.

The OTA pipeline delivered updates from the OEM cloud dashboard to the two-wheeler digital instrument cluster. The user could view the release notes, and accept or cancel the download of the OTA update.

• ECU Replacement Detection & Authentication

An intelligence layer was added to the telematics device to detect and classify the ECUs. The layer reported if:

1. The ECU is already mapped to the vehicle (authorized replacement)
2. The ECU is unmapped – A new component that needs mapping.
3. The ECU is mapped to another vehicle – potentially a case of tampering.

Unauthorized ECUs are barred from OTA processes.

• Remote ECU Re-Onboarding

Our implementation allows the telematics device to identify the new ECU post authentication and prompts the cloud operator to approve re-onboarding remotely. Once approved, the telematics control unit (TCU) supports in mapping the new ECU to the vehicle’s VIN without physical intervention.

• Diagnostics & Error Handling

The solution also enhanced visibility on the OTA update status. After implementation, if the vehicle is subjected to network disruptions, the OTA & error status is reported through multiple channels:

1. Through the vehicle cluster display via CAN bus.
2. Through the OBD port as Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs) for technicians.
• Predictive Maintenance & Analytics

To support OEMs in avoiding vehicle recalls we integrated the architecture with the capabilities to track predictive maintenance parameters that can be accessed by the telematics device.

The predictive maintenance solution also supported data collection on how OTA features and device functions are being used. Using this data, the customer can understand the usage patterns across the vehicle line-up.

• Forced Flashing for Remote Firmware Updates

To enforce critical security patches and bugs that can lead to hardware malfunctioning, we added a forced flashing feature to the OTA architecture. The feature can only be executed by users with higher authority roles, during emergencies.

This allows the vehicle interface controller (VIC) and modem firmware to be flashed without requiring physical hardware tools or on-site presence.

This enabled engineering and support teams to flash devices remotely.

• Custom Internal Tools Built with AI Assistance

The team developed two internal tools using open-source AI tools – ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. They are:

1. AI-powered Log Analyzer: Using the device log file as an input, the tool automatically reports how many times a device rebooted within a pre-defined window and summarizes error events. Previously, engineers would manually search through logs line-by-line.
2. MQTT parser tool: A real-time tool that accepts the telematics device’s IMEI and displays data such as GPS fix status, latitude, longitude and CAN data from the cloud. This replaced the generic MQTTX tool used earlier.

Along with this, our team also developed AI agents that were trained on Quectel technical documentation to accelerate the feature feasibility analysis and identify implementation approaches to reduce analysis and integration effort.

• Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Implementation

Embitel’s engineers developed a working public key infrastructure implementation to enable data integrity and authenticity to and from the telematics device, OTA client and OEM cloud server.

To know more about this, read our blog on telematics cybersecurity.

Embitel's Impact

The key outcomes of this large-scale project included: