Controller Area Network (CAN)
What is CAN?
A controller area network (CAN) bus is a high-integrity serial bus system for
networking intelligent devices. CAN busses and devices are common
components in automotive and industrial systems.
CAN History
Bosch originally developed CAN in 1985 for in-vehicle networks. In the past,
automotive manufacturers connected electronic devices in vehicles using point-
to-point wiring systems. Manufacturers began using more and more electronics
in vehicles, which resulted in bulky wire harnesses that were heavy and
expensive. They then replaced dedicated wiring with in-vehicle networks, which
reduced wiring cost, complexity, and weight. CAN, a high-integrity serial bus
system for networking intelligent devices, emerged as the standard in-vehicle
network. The automotive industry quickly adopted CAN and, in 1993, it became
the international standard known as ISO 11898. Since 1994, several higher-
level protocols have been standardized on CAN, such as CANopen and
DeviceNet. Other markets have widely adopted these additional protocols,
which are now standards for industrial communications. This white paper
focuses on CAN as an in-vehicle network.
CAN Benefits
Low-Cost, Lightweight Network
CAN provides an inexpensive, durable network that helps multiple CAN devices
communicate with one another. An advantage to this is that electronic control
units (ECUs) can have a single CAN interface rather than analog and digital
inputs to every device in the system. This decreases overall cost and weight in
automobiles.
Broadcast Communication
Each of the devices on the network has a CAN controller chip and is therefore
intelligent. All devices on the network see all transmitted messages. Each
device can decide if a message is relevant or if it should be filtered. This
structure allows modifications to CAN networks with minimal impact.
Additional non-transmitting nodes can be added without modification to the
network.
Priority
Every message has a priority, so if two nodes try to send messages
simultaneously, the one with the higher priority gets transmitted and the one
with the lower priority gets postponed. This arbitration is non-destructive and
results in non-interrupted transmission of the highest priority message. This
also allows networks to meet deterministic timing constraints.
Error Capabilities
The CAN specification includes a Cyclic Redundancy Code (CRC) to perform
error checking on each frame's contents. Frames with errors are disregarded
by all nodes, and an error frame can be transmitted to signal the error to the
network. Global and local errors are differentiated by the controller, and if too
many errors are detected, individual nodes can stop transmitting errors or
disconnect itself from the network completely.
Limitations of the CAN protocol
Limited transmission speed (up to 1 Mbps)
Limited bus length (up to 500 m)
Security can be a problem.
bus length Transfer rate
(m) (kbit/s)
40 1000
100 500
200 250
500 100
CAN Physical Layers
CAN has several different physical layers you can use. These physical layers
classify certain aspects of the CAN network, such as electrical levels, signaling
schemes, cable impedance, maximum baud rates, and more. The most
common and widely used physical layers are described below:
High-Speed/FD CAN
High-speed CAN is by far the most common physical layer. High-speed CAN
networks are implemented with two wires and allow communication at transfer
rates up to 1 Mbit/s.
Low-Speed/Fault-Tolerant CAN Hardware
Low-speed/fault-tolerant CAN networks are also implemented with two wires,
can communicate with devices at rates up to 125 kbit/s, and offer transceivers
with fault-tolerant capabilities.
Single-Wire CAN Hardware
Single-wire CAN interfaces can communicate with devices at rates up to 33.3
kbit/s (88.3 kbit/s in high-speed mode).
CAN Protocol Terminology
SOF (start-of-frame) bit – indicates the beginning of a message with a
dominant (logic 0) bit.
Arbitration ID – identifies the message and indicates the message's
priority. Frames come in two formats -- standard, which uses an 11-bit
arbitration ID, and extended, which uses a 29-bit arbitration ID.
IDE (identifier extension) bit – allows differentiation between
standard and extended frames.
RTR (remote transmission request) bit – serves to differentiate a
remote frame from a data frame. A dominant (logic 0) RTR bit
indicates a data frame. A recessive (logic 1) RTR bit indicates a
remote frame.
DLC (data length code) – indicates the number of bytes the data
field contains.
Data Field – contains 0 to 8 bytes of data.
CRC (cyclic redundancy check) – contains 15-bit cyclic redundancy
check code and a recessive delimiter bit.
ACK (ACKnowledgement) slot – any CAN controller that correctly
receives the message sends an ACK bit at the end of the message.