Schedulability analysis of messages in a CAN network applied to an unmanned airship

This paper presents the application of a CAN network to the integration of sensors and actuators in an unmanned airship called HELIX, based on the architecture of distributed processing proposed by L.M. Pinho (2001). Initially, a study of the viability of several communication networks used in vehicles (such as CAN, VAN, C2D and FIP, etc.) was accomplished. The preliminary study concluded that the behavior of CAN was better for this application when compared to other types of networks analyzed. In the present work, a detailed study of the employability of a CAN network in the HELIX project was accomplished, including situations not considered in the preliminary analysis, such as the presence of jitter in the group of messages, the high load of messages over the network, and the consideration of presence of transmission errors. As the CAN networks offer good properties for transmission of messages with temporal requirements, a schedulability analysis was accomplished for the transmission of messages and a numeric example is presented in an illustrative way to the present problem.