Serial Bus Structures for Automotive Applications

The use of serial communications to route control information in an automobile can potentially provide many benefits. Serial data busses have been used in the data processing environment for many years but are unsuitable for use in real time control applications. Recently, Local Area Networks have been developed which provide the functional features required for control applications but are too expensive for use in the automobile. N. V. Philips and Signetics have applied these concepts to develop a Small Area Network capability which can be integrated onto micro-computers and other Integrated circuit devices at low cost, providing the proper cost/ performance tradeoff for their use in the automotive environment.