The future of heavy-duty networking

Imamoter researchers believe Ethernet can be an excellent candidate to supersede the CAN bus for SAE J1939 powertrain network applications.

SAE J1939 was designed in an embedded world, where distributed control was just the future, and the aim of SAE J1939 has been to interconnect units to transmit status information, rather than to realize real distributed control systems. It can be said that SAE J1939 is a “distributed information system,” rather than a distributed control system protocol network.

Conversely, in the very near future, controlled machines are expected to simultaneously communicate, both with each other and with human operators, through Wi-Fi, for instance, exchanging their position, direction, and speed; their tasks and task objectives; and other data relevant for the common task to be performed, providing a distributed production system for construction and farming.