CAN Facilitates In-Vehicle Networking

Controller Area Network (CAN) is a serial communications protocol that is optimized for real-time control. This paper addresses how the CAN protocol handles different functional in-vehicle communications requirements such as broadcasting of messages, handling generic- or device-specific request and response, and handling generic- or device-specific command and acknowledge. The functional requirements are elaborated by using the SAE J1922 as an example of a control and communications network and the 82526 as an example of a CAN implementation that is optimized for J1922 type of networks. The concept of a General CAN implementation is introduced; the concept can be used for other control and communications networks.