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CAN PROTOCOL -
INTRODUCTION

AUTOMOTIVE COMMUNICATION
PROTOCOLS
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 Session Objectives
• After undergoing this session the students will be able to
understand:
– Concepts of CAN protocol

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Foundation of CAN
• The foundations of the CAN concept were laid, at a given period, on the
basis of a state of the market and technology.

• For a long time, many companies developed their own solutions for In-
vehicle communication.

• Nearly all of these solutions are known as ‘proprietary’.

• Because of the different interests of each of the companies involved, this has
led to a significant fragmentation of the market.

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History

• Controller Area Network (CAN) was initially created by German

automotive system supplier Robert Bosch in the mid-1980s for
automotive applications as a method for enabling robust serial
communication

• The goal was to make automobiles more reliable, safe and fuel-
efficient while decreasing wiring harness weight and complexity

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 History
• CAN was first developed by Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany in 1986 when they
were requested to develop a communication system between three ECUs
(electronic control units) in vehicles designed by Mercedes.

• They found that point to point communications was no longer suitable in this
situation. The need for a multi-master communication system became
imperative.

• The first CAN silicon was then fabricated in 1987 by Intel

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History

• 1983 Start of the Bosch internal project to develop an in-vehicle network

• 1986 Official introduction of CAN protocol

• 1987 First CAN controller chips from Intel and Philips Semiconductors

• 1991 Bosch’s CAN specification published

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History

• 1991 CAN Kingdom CAN-based higher-layer protocol introduced by Kvaser

• 1992 CAN in Automation (CiA) international users and manufacturers group

established

• 1992 CAN Application Layer (CAL) protocol published by CiA

• 1992 First cars from Mercedes-Benz used CAN network

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History
• 1993 ISO 11898 standard published

• 1994 1st international CAN Conference (iCC) organized by CiA

• 1994 DeviceNet protocol introduction by Allen-Bradley

• 1995 ISO 11898 amendment (extended frame format) published.

• 1995 CANopen protocol published by CiA

• 2000 Development of the time-triggered communication protocol

for CAN (TTCAN)

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Concept of CAN
• CAN was designed to operate in environments subject to a high level of
pollution, primarily due to electromagnetic disturbance

• CAN achieves transmission reliability by an efficient error detection

mechanism

• CAN has multi-master functionality to increase the possibility of providing

fast recovery from errors after their detection

• Bitwise arbitration principle provides a ‘non-destructive’ arbitration method,

when several stations attempt to send a message simultaneously

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Introduction
• Controller Area Network (CAN) is a serial network

• A network among sensors, microcontrollers and actuators

• Now popular in industrial automation and agricultural

applications

• Two-wire system, well suited for high speed applications using

short messages

• Offers communication rate up to 1 Mbits/sec allowing real-

time control

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Introduction
• CAN is also used in many other industrial automation and control
applications

• Has an OSI session layer known as Time Triggered CAN (TTCAN)

• Has a sub-bus known as the Local Interconnect Network (LIN)

• CAN is documented in ISO 11898 (for applications up to 1Mbps) and ISO

11519 (for applications up to 125 Kbps)

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Main Characteristics of CAN

• Bus topology
• Bus speed
• Identification of the contents of the message
• Priority of messages
• Multi master
• Bus access control : Non destructive bit wise arbitration.
• Small messages (max 8 data bytes) protected by checks.

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 Industrial Applications of CAN
• CAN controllers and interface chips are available as low-cost, off-the-
shelf components

• They operate at high, real-time speeds, and in harsh environments

• All these properties have led to CAN also being used in a wide range of
applications other than the car industry

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Industrial Applications of CAN
The benefits of reduced cost and improved reliability that the car industry gains
by using CAN are now available to manufacturers of a wide range of products.
For Example :

• Marine control and navigation systems

• Elevator control systems

• Agricultural machinery

• Production line control systems

• Machine tools

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ISO Standardization
• At present (2007), the principal standards relate to motor vehicle
applications and are known by the following references

• ISO 11898-x – road vehicles – interchange of digital information. This is the

cornerstone of the CAN standard, consisting of five documents:
– ISO 11898-1 (data link layer and physical signaling);
– ISO 11898-2 (high-speed medium access unit);
– ISO 11898-3 (low-speed fault-tolerant medium-dependent interface);
– ISO 11898-4 (time-triggered CAN);
– ISO 11898-5 relates to high-speed CAN and low-power applications.

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ISO Standardization

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ISO-OSI Reference Model
• Most network applications follow a layered approach to system
implementation

• This systematic approach enables interoperability between products from

different manufacturers

• A standard was created by the International Standards Organization (ISO) as

a template to follow for this layered approach. It is called the ISO Open
Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model

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ISO-OSI Reference Model

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Data Link Layer
• The data link layer is subdivided into two sublayers MAC and LLC

• The MAC sublayer is the core of the CAN protocol. Its function is to present
messages received to the LLC sublayer, and to accept messages for
transmission from the LLC sublayer

• The MAC sublayer is responsible for the following operations:

– Message framing
– Arbitration
– Acknowledgement
– Error detection and
– Error signaling

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Data Link Layer
• LLC (logical link control) sublayer

• The LLC sublayer is concerned with the following:

– Message filtering,
– Overload notification,
– The error recovery procedure.

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Physical Layer
• The physical layer – layer 1 – comprises three sublayers:
– PLS (physical signalling)
– PMA (physical medium attachment)
– MDI (medium-dependent interface)

• The physical layer specifies the way in which the signal is transmitted

• It ensures the physical transfer of bits between the different nodes

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Physical Layer
• Physical layer is mainly responsible for the following operations:
– Bit representation (coding, timing, etc.)
– Bit synchronization
– Definition of the electrical and optical levels of the signals
– Definition of the transmission medium

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CAN Interface and Network

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CAN Bus-General

• The nodes taking part in communication using CAN are usually arranged in
bus topology

• All stations independently generate messages concerning their respective

tasks at random (event-triggered) instants

• The transmission requests contend with each other for access to the bus,
leading to latencies which are variable rather than constant

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CAN Bus-General
• The nodes use different principles of arbitration

• CSMA/CD
– Carrier Sensor Multiple Access/Collision Detect (CSMA/CD)

– When several stations try to access the bus simultaneously when it is at

rest, a contention message is detected

– The transmission is then halted and all the stations withdraw from the
network

– After a certain period, different for each station, each station again tries
to access the network

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CAN Bus-General
– These data transfer cancellations during contention theoretically also
decrease the carrying capacity of the network.

– The network may even be totally blocked at peak traffic times, which is
unacceptable when the network is to be used for what are known as
‘real-time’ applications.

• CSMA/CA
– Carrier Sensor Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA).

– The device operates with a contention procedure not at the time of the
attempt to access the bus, but at the level of the bit itself (bitwise
contention – conflict management within the duration of the bit).

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CAN Bus-General

– This principle has been adopted in the CAN (controller area network)
protocol

– In this case, bus access conflicts can be avoided by assigning a level of

priority to each message carried.

– In the case of contention, the message having the highest priority will
always gain access to the bus.

– Clearly, the latency of the messages will then depend markedly on the
priority levels chosen and assigned to each of them.

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Bitwise Contention
• During the arbitration phase, in order to have higher priority bits in the
network erasing those of lower priority, the physical signal on the bus must
be:

– Either dominant,0 for example, the presence of power, current, light or

electromagnetic radiation,

– Or recessive,1 for example, an absence of power.

• By definition, when a dominant bit and a recessive bit are transmitted

simultaneously on the bus, the resulting state on the bus must be the
dominant state.

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Latency

• Latency is generally defined as the time between the instant indicating the
request for transmission and the actual start of the action generated by this.

• The latency of a message can be defined as the time elapsing between the
instant indicating a request for transmission and the actual start of the
transmission.

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Error Processing and Management
• In conventional methods of non-detection of errors is the return of a
‘positive’ acknowledgement from the receiving station to the transmitting
station, when a message is received correctly.

• In the CAN concept, the idea of a local address completely disappears, and
the identifier ‘labeling’ the message is transmitted to all the participants and
received everywhere in the network.

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Error Management

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Important Terms
• Sending node (station)
– The node (station) generating a message is called the ‘sender’ of this
message
– In terms of CAN, a station is called the ‘sender’ until the bus is idle or
until the unit has lost the arbitration.

• Receiving node (station)

– The node (station) receiving a message is called the ‘receiver’ of this
message
– In terms of CAN, a node (station) is called the ‘receiver’ of a message if it
is not the ‘sender’ of a message and if the bus is not free.

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Values of the Bus

• The bus can have one of the two complementary logical values defined not
as ‘0’ and ‘1’ as usual, but as what are called ‘dominant’ and ‘recessive’
values.

• In case of a simultaneous transmission of a dominant bit and a recessive bit,

the resulting value of the bus will be ‘dominant’.

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