In modern vehicles, the wiring harness connects all components with power and data, and has grown significantly in size, weight, and complexity due to the increasing number of functions. As a response, zonal architectures are emerging as a promising alternative to classical domain-based electrical/electronic (E/E) architectures. Since the architectural decision strongly influences the resulting wiring harness, early evaluation of its impact is crucial. This paper proposes a method to generate zonal architectures by solving a location covering problem and to route both zonal and non-zonal architectures using a multi-commodity flow model. Both problems are formulated as integer linear programs to enable fast and optimal solutions. A final case study demonstrates that increasing the number of zones in zonal architectures reduces wiring length and complexity.
Index Terms—wiring harness, automotive, E/E architecture, zonal architecture, routing, architecture evaluation