J2716 SENT - Single Edge Nibble Transmission, Updates and Status

The SAE J2716 SENT (Single Edge Nibble Transmission) Protocol has entered production with a number of announced products. The SENT protocol is a point-to-point scheme for transmitting signal values from a sensor to a controller. It is intended to allow for high resolution data transmission with a lower system cost than available serial data solution. The SAE SENT Task Force has developed a number of enhancements and clarifications to the original specification which are summarized in this paper.

The most significant updates include the following:

• Adding an optional pause pulse which can make the frame length independent of the SENT message data content
• Defining a new enhanced serial message encoding as an optional replacement for the original short serial data message
• Clarifying the diagnostics and remedial actions for successive calibration pulse comparisons
• Adding recommended processing of a zero nibble in addition to the data in the checksum calculation to protect against a common error in the last data nibble and checksum
• Adding a new recommended circuit topology to better support 3.3V receiver systems
• Updating specification of data formats and protocols for mass air flow (MAF), Temperature and Pressure applications.
• Adding new communication protocols to take advantage of the new Enhanced Serial Message
• Adding EMC Susceptibility testing guidelines