A high-performance application protocol for fault-tolerant CAN networks

CAN is a communication protocol largely used in automotive and industrial appliances because of the simple procedure for its parameterization and the low cost of its circuitry. The native CAN, however, does not assure the fault-tolerance level required by safety-critical appliances and somewhat sophisticated protocols have been introduced for their networking. In an attempt to keep on the advantages of CAN, several application protocols have been developed to supplement the native CAN with the aim of giving the CAN networks safety features. This paper continues such a research trend by proposing a CAN application protocol termed time-triggered bus-redundant CAN (TTBR-CAN) that outdoes the performance of the existing ones. After describing the architecture of TTBR-CAN, details are given on its implementation and experimental results are reported to demonstrate its effectiveness.