Recently, significant focus and development effort has been dedicated toward in-vehicle networking. This effort includes work on behalf of the American Trucking Association (ATA), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the International Standards Organization (ISO), and independent developments by automotive and semiconductor manufacturers. In-vehicle networking extends, as a result, beyond passenger cars into heavy truck, military, and construction vehicles. In the course of these developments, the benefits of networking have been examined and networking is perceived as having significant benefits, resulting in production and custom development [1, 2, 3].
The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a high-performance serial communication solution which has been designed to meet the requirements for the broad range of applications and has now progressed from a specification to a product.
This paper will detail the CAN solution and the CAN products designed to support in-vehicle networking needs in the 80's and 90's. Further, the paper will discuss the CAN development tools and show network implementations and examples from a system designers perspective.